A Change in History: The Philosopher's Stone
by Kinda-Mayvelle
Summary: AU: Sequel to ACiH. Harry, Blaise, Theo and Draco are finally off to Hogwarts. However, not everything is as it seems. By the end of the year Harry will lose someone close to him, fight his own battles and realize just what it means to be the Dark Heir.
1. The Letter

**A Change in History: The Philosopher's Stone**

_A HP Fanfiction_

Disclaimer: I do not own HP.

**Chapter One: The Letter**

* * *

"**HOGWARTS SCHOOL**

_of_** WITCHCRAFT **_and_** WIZARDRY**

Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE

_(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, _

_Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)_

Dear Mr. Morgan,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted

at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please

find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no

later than July 31.

Yours sincerely,"

Harry scanned the elegantly penned lines of the signature and folded up the missive with a sort of detached finality. He stared down at the thick sheaf of parchment crumpled in his fist even as Draco whooped disgracefully and waved his own letter high in the air, forgetting all about the breakfast set out before him on the dining table. Narcissa looked up from her own plate and scowled lightly at him with a fleeting disapproval.

"Draco, please don't. It's undignified." Draco ignored her, choosing instead to rest his elbows—something Narcissa turned her nose up and huffed in indignation at—and lean forward in his seat, catching Harry's eye.

"Do you know what this means? We're officially in! Of course, there was no doubt of it, but it _is_ a lot different being told you're going to go and actually holding the proof in your own hands, eh?" Harry snapped out of his hazy trance and spared his friend a smile.

"Sure is. I wonder what House I'll be in." Draco snorted and brandished his right hand, which still held his Hogwarts letter, dismissively in the air. It came perilously close to the flaming candles of low hanging chandelier above the table and Narcissa snapped at him, her patience at an end. Draco forced back a frown and sank back into his chair.

"Slytherin, of course. What other House could you possibly go to? You're the _Heir_, for Merlin's sake—" ("Draco, don't swear!") "and that's the House I'll be in, and I'm dead certain that Theo and Blaise will be there, too." Harry shook his head at his friend's righteously confident expression and poked at the egg on the plate in front of him.

"I don't know. Ravenclaw sounds sort of nice." Harry replied evasively, knowing how the blond would react.

"_Ravenclaw_? _Please_, Harry, why would you want to go there? Nothing but a bunch of single-minded bookworms. Of course," he added almost as an afterthought, "Ravenclaw _is _far better than Hufflepuff or" he shuddered theatrically "_Gryffindor._" He fairly spat the word, crinkling his pointed nose in disgust as if he had just uttered an appalling swear word. "Believe me Harry," he finished surely, polishing off the last remnants of bacon that remained on his plate, "Slytherin is the way to go."

Harry, who had been prodding the egg on his plate with half-hearted enthusiasm, jabbed it a bit too hard with the sharp end of his fork. The egg split open and the gooey, yellow yoke spilled from its fragile cage and seeped to the far corners of his plate, soaking the few scraps of toast and hash browns that still remained. Harry scowled and pushed the offending mess away, rising from his chair and following Draco as he strolled casually from the room. Narcissa had left the table without a word during their mostly one-sided exchange of words, and for it Harry was secretly glad: as much as Harry liked the Malfoys Draco's mother could get viciously unpleasant if she wished to and Harry had enough to deal with without a rare showing of her temper.

* * *

"No." 

"Oh come _on_, Harry, it's not going to kill you."

"I beg to differ."

Theo groaned in annoyance at his friend's stubbornness. "Look, its just hair dye. We need to change your image before we go to Hogwarts. Just do it for us at least, alright?" he added, catching the stony and unyielding expression on Harry's visage with little difficulty. "We won't do much. Just add a touch of color, won't we, Draco?" Draco blinked and the evil grin that had been on his face since the beginning of the argument disappeared. The boy nodded solemnly.

"Of course," he said with perfect innocence, though Harry detected a darkly amused smirk tugging at the edges of his mouth. "After all, you know more curses than the rest of us combined. Ruining your hair would be suicide."

Harry's lips, if possible, thinned even further and his eyes hardened into blocks of ice. "Forget it," he gritted out. "You're not getting near me with that thing."

Theo sighed and gave the bottle of hair dye in his hand a dramatic shake. "Dear me, dear me, whatever are we to do?" He lamented with such a staged tone of voice that Harry immediately knew he was plotting. His eyes narrowed in on the offending container. Theo grinned and gave the bottle another strong shake to ensure he had all of Harry's attention. "I suppose we could just drop it…But then again," the grin on his face was touched with a heavy dose of playful malice, "Mrs. Malfoy has been just _aching_ to do something about that tail you call hair. Why, I heard her talking this morning about cutting it off…"

Harry was horrified and it showed. "She wouldn't," he whispered, stricken with uneasiness. "You're lying."

Draco gave him a serpentine smile as Theo snickered quietly. "Am I?" he taunted, toying with the cap of the bottle. "You may never know. The question here is my dear friend, are you willing to take that risk? If you don't want her to make it so that your hair's short again, I'd suggest we strike a bargain: We—as in Draco and I—will convince her not to go through with it. That is, of course, implying that you agree to our terms of contract. Are we?"

Harry glared at him with all the venom in his system. "You two go way past evil," he muttered, eyeing the container held in Theo's hand, "I don't even know _what _you are. It goes beyond my vocabulary."

Theo's grin grew wider. "Is that agreement I hear in your voice?" Harry grunted, struggling with himself before nodding grudgingly. Draco stepped forward from his place over Theo's shoulder and led him over to the nearest door, which was the entrance to Harry's bathroom. As he exited the room at Draco's stern guidance Harry glanced desperately behind him at Blaise who was sitting in an armchair, watching the events unfold with exasperated amusement. Blaise had said not a word in Harry's defense, and as his slanted eyes met the raven haired boy's he shook his head, a smile tugging at his lips. Harry glared at him and mouthed 'Traitor!' before Theo gave him an impatient push to the back. Harry stumbled into the bathroom swearing lowly under his breath, and Theo clucked his tongue in disapproval.

"If we're going to do this we need complete compliance." He closed and locked the door behind him with a click. The sound it made seemed deafening to Harry's ears in the oppressive silence of the closed in chamber, bouncing off the sleek linoleum underneath his feet. Harry gulped as a hand grabbed his shoulder and as he felt himself being tugged towards the sink in the corner Harry believed he had never met two people as grossly manipulative as these two, save his father.

* * *

"There, all done. See, that didn't kill you, now did it?" 

Harry heard a hum of smug approval from his right, and Draco reached over and tapped Harry's forehead.

"You can open your eyes now, Harry. It's over." Harry's eyelids remained firmly shut.

"I'd rather not look thanks. I'm afraid I'll go mad if I see what you've done with my hair." A sigh echoed through the hollowed room from behind him and from the sound of it Theo had moved to the back of his chair.

_Probably to escape whatever reaction I'll have to their torture,_ Harry thought sarcastically. The boy felt a pair of fingers rap more persistently on his brow and he reached up his own hand and swatted them away.

"You'll have to look sometime, Harry. You can't go around with your eyes closed forever. You'd be banging off walls for the rest of your life." Amusement fairly oozed from Draco's voice and Harry scowled lightly.

Do I have to?" Harry felt an arm link itself underneath his own arms and haul him with much effort to his feet. Harry didn't resist, for he knew they could do nothing to him that they hadn't done already.

"Yes you have to."

"Think of it this way Harry," Draco said from his right. "The sooner you look, the sooner you can get it over with."

Harry mulled over this. "I suppose…" he started dubiously. Twin hands clapped onto both his shoulders and he felt himself being turned on the spot.

"Jolly good." Theo replied genially. "Now open your eyes. I want to see your reaction!" Harry very nearly refused to do so altogether simply from the tone of the boy's voice, but instead he sighed and opened his eyes, watching for a split second as their emerald green reflected back at him from the mirror over the sink that was before him. His jaw dropped in shock.

His hair was still the same length it had been, reaching about an inch past his shoulders, but there was something different about it. It was still black, he surmised as he tilted his head to the side in confusion. He jolted in astonishment and did it again, instead in the opposite direction as he noticed the change. His hair—previously an ebony color no matter what way you turned it—now seemed to shine with a very dark burgundy, so faint that you wouldn't have even noticed it was there if you hadn't known what it had looked like before the treatment. The same thing had been applied to his bangs, which he kept long so he could hide the annoyingly noticeable shade of his eyes when he went out into public. His jaw worked soundlessly in surprise and Theo whooped triumphantly behind him.

"Look at your face! Merlin, this is _priceless_." The boy exclaimed happily, bouncing up to stand next to the shocked Heir. "Isn't it wicked? I picked the color." He said proudly, puffing his chest out as he surveyed his handiwork. Draco snorted softly and paced towards them to stand on Harry's other side.

"You selected a vampire-like name Harry," Draco remarked slyly, a smirk spreading unchecked across his face. "I figured that this would do nicely to compliment that."

Harry was still frozen stock-still in shock, but slowly he began to really examine the change wrought in his appearance. Theo grinned smugly at Draco behind Harry's back.

"I told you he'd like it," Theo gloated. Draco spared him a withering glare.

"It was my idea, you dolt." Theo stuck his tongue out at him and beamed at Harry.

"See? I knew you'd like it. You do, don't you? I know you do. Why won't you admit it?"

"He's too stubborn and proud to admit it, but he likes it. It's fairly obvious," he pointed out indifferently with a shrug of his shoulders when Harry turned to glare at him. He didn't seem to be interested in his friend's reaction at all, but Harry knew better. The devilish glint in his eyes gave him away. Theo tapped on his back to get his attention and handed him a cord of leather. Harry nodded his thanks and tied his hair back, leaving his bangs to frame his face.

"There," Theo said, nodding. "Now it's finished. Looking sharp, Harry."

Harry cuffed him round the head with a roll of his eyes, but secretly he was pleased. He smiled slightly to himself in a mirror and followed the two out of the room, not paying any attention to Blaise's bemused response to his new look. He wondered vaguely what Nagini would think, but quickly pushed the thought away with a shiver. Nagini was going to go ballistic.

**

* * *

A/N: Hehe, this chapter was so much fun to write. - Next chapter, we go to Diagon Alley! Darn the stupid formatting for this site--they ruined the formatting for the Hogwarts letter that I had to fight with my computer to achieve! And it looks identical to the one from canon on my Word program, too...Grrr... **

**For those of you confused about Harry having his hair dyed, think of it this way: despite the growth and changes he's gone through since leaving the Potters, he still looks remarkably like James—something no one who knew what Harry looked like back then would miss. The color of his eyes gives him away as well (I hinted at that in this chapter) so Draco and Theo added "just a little color" to his hair to make the similarity less distinct. They can't do much to Harry's appearance for various reasons.**

**Magic can't be used. Spells can be cast to cancel that out, and that wouldn't be good for Harry. Magical accidents can also cancel out any glamour spells he may use.**

**Muggle ways can't be used, either. He'd have to continuously re-apply the hair dye and other things to keep up the appearance, and it is far too easy for Harry to forget once he gets caught up in the bustling school life at Hogwarts. Contacts to hide his eye color wouldn't work, either; sooner or later he would have to get the prescription changed (I know this because my mother used to have to use contacts) and that liquid thing they use to keep the contacts fresh (forget the name)? Harry would have to go get more eventually, and it wouldn't be wise to have the Malfoys buy it and send it to him. Malfoys buying Muggle products? I don't think so, even if they could get away with it. And if Harry's caught opening said package he'd have to explain why he had them. I mean, bad eyesight (which he doesn't have anymore) is one thing, but why would the color of the contacts be different from his actual eye color, which you can tell by the look of the contact itself? No, it would be too risky, so they have to make do with as little as possible so that they won't slip up. Basically what they did was give him very faint burgundy highlights, and even though it's a Gryffindor color, well…they couldn't very well use green, right? That would take explanations they can't afford to give and be pretty odd besides.**

**On another note, I thought it would be nice to put a bit of humor in this chapter. Although this is a Dark!Harry story, I felt that some of you could use the humor, especially after what happened in chapter thirteen of the previous installment (there, for those of you who haven't read the prequel to this story nothing is spoiled!). Besides, the idea came to me and I couldn't shake it off. I _had_ to write it; it wouldn't let me do otherwise.**

**I do apologize for boring you on the last chapter of the last story, but describing Malfoy Manor was necessary. Quite a few major events happen here and at least having a reference for the general layout of the building will come in handy later.**

**Some of you have asked and yes, Harry _does_ have a plan for Hogwarts. What it is, you ask? You'll have to read to find out, I'm afraid. :) He will be getting a wand next chapter when they go to Diagon Alley; he can't very well go parading around Hogwarts casting wandless magic left and right, ne? **

**For those of you "action junkies" who read this saga (and yes, it will be a saga) there will be action in this story. After all, with three-headed dogs, Quidditch and a possessed teacher, how can't there be? **

**Yes, for the moment Voldemort is dead. He will return, but for now he's MIA. However, he _will_ make a few appearances before he's resurrected.**

**No, this won't be slash, sorry to disappoint everyone who wanted it. Other than Harry toying with a few females in the school for practical purposes (information gathering, for example) I don't plan on there being any relationships. I might change my mind later, but for now that's how it is. I apologize to those of you who wanted romance, but as I've told others—I'm not very good at writing romance.**

**There _should_ be vampires in this; I'm not certain at this point whether or not it's worth the trouble, but I'm hoping I might be able to fit in a scene where Tom tries to garner their allegiance. The werewolf who turned Remus? I'm not sure. Unless I choose to have him play a viable role in the war most likely not. Though at the moment, now that mention it, a new plot twist _is_ coming to mind…I'll have to see if I can work that in for you without slowing the plot down.**

**It's good to see people believe me when I say that Harry isn't going Light. Believe it or not in the beginning Lily and James were just going to neglect and ignore Harry instead of beating him, but I changed it. After all, only being neglectful still gives them a window of opportunity to be forgiven, and I didn't want them to have a snowball's chance in Hawaii to have such a reprieve. I'm sure you all agree with me. :)**

**Also—I've put this up in my profile, but in case some of you missed it—I have a forum created on dedicated solely to this saga, so you can check it out and talk to other people who read this story for fun if you have spare time. You'll find the link up by my penname (for those of you who don't know where it is) in my profile.**

**Anywho, next chapter should be up sometime next week, so look forward to it!**


	2. Diagon Alley

**A Change in History: The Philosopher's Stone**

_A HP Fanfiction_

Disclaimer: I do not own HP.

**Chapter Two: Diagon Alley**

* * *

"Stuff it, Theo."

"Oh, but Draco, you look absolutely _darling_--"

"I _said_, stuff it!"

Harry sighed and pressed his forehead against the blissfully cool stone of the fireplace before him, inwardly groaning. Would he have to deal with this all day?

"I'm warning you--"

"But Draco, purple is so _slimming_ on you--"

"SHUT UP!" Both Draco and Theo jumped, wide eyed at the sudden sound. Harry pushed himself off his perch, glaring balefully at the pair. "We're not going to dawdle about and act like complete idiots. Draco," he addressed the blond boy, completely disregarding the sulking expression overtaking his face, "Your mother and father trusted us enough to allow us to go to Diagon Alley _alone_, and I for one don't want to give them cause to usher us about like cattle. So stuff it, the both of you, and get over it. I'm not in the mood today." Theo scowled at him.

"Wow, Harry, you're really in a bad mood. What's got your knickers in a twist?" Harry leveled a dark look at him. Harry felt he had full rights to be irritable, after the nightmare he had the night before—it was the same one that had been haunting his sleep off and on for about a year now, and it was always about the same thing.

"I just am, so please don't give me any reason to hex you to the brink of oblivion. Now, are we going or what?" Theo grunted an affirmative, and Draco's features turned stoic. It was a sure fire sign that he was brooding.

As if on cue, Blaise stepped through the door of the drawing room, strolling with a casual air towards them. "You lot ready to leave?" Draco's eye twitched, the only sign of his annoyance, but he nodded and stepped towards the grate, brushing past Harry indifferently with his nose in the air. The blond grabbed a handful of dust from an ornate canister on the mantle and tossed it into the roaring flames, which promptly turned green. Draco stepped forward into the fire, snatching up the end of his silk cloak as he did so in his left hand. With a swirl of the material and a shout of "Diagon Alley!" he was gone, shooting one last disdainful glance towards Theo as he did so.

"He always does that, the show off…" Harry rolled his eyes in exasperation and Blaise did the same behind him. The Dark Heir stalked up behind Theo and pushed him forward slightly, quelling any arguments with a fierce stare. Theo wilted and took up his own handful of Floo powder, copying Draco's actions verbatim—minus the theatrics, of course. When he was gone Harry sighed and knuckled his forehead, motioning Blaise before him. Today was going to be a long day.

* * *

"Harry, are you _done_ yet?"

Harry grumble quietly to himself as he thanked the store owner and picked up the heavy bag at his feet, lugging it out of the gloomy shop into the open air where his friends awaited him impatiently. The sign for the Apothecary gleamed brilliantly in the bright sun above their heads and Harry had to struggle to make out what they were saying over the roar of the crowd pressing in around them.

"It's about time. I was about to go in and drag you out."

"No need for that, you know. I just needed a few extra potions ingredients is all." Draco and Theo both rolled their eyes heavenward.

"Yeah right, Harry. If you say so." Theo replied with a shrug.

"I told you to call me 'Damien' in public. We don't want to draw attention to ourselves." Harry hissed at him, his gaze darting around the avenue to check if anyone had heard. Theo flapped his hands nonchalantly.

"I know, I know. Habit, I guess. I'll get used to it." Theo squinted down the cobbled street, wincing when the sun hit his eyes. "Where to next?" he asked them. Blaise came forward out of the shadows where he had been leaning against the wall and watching the passersby and pointed down the street.

"How about the ice cream parlor? I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm sweating." It was true. Blaise's dark skin was dotted with large beads of perspiration, and Harry knew it must be sweltering in the heavy black robes the boy always wore. He was eternally thankful that he owned mostly lighter clothes, meant for the hotter months.

Feeling sympathetic, Harry agreed, though he secretly enjoyed the thought of ice cream on a day like today—no adults around, only him and his friends to talk about whatever they want without consequence or danger of being overheard by a house elf who would report to Draco's parents. "Yeah, let's go there. I need a break from all this shopping, anyways."

They four seated themselves in the shade a little further back from the crowded street and ordered their ice cream, settling back into the comfy chairs to enjoy the weather. After a moment of content silence while they waited for their orders Theo turned to Blaise.

"Heard your mother married again. How many times is that now?" Blaise snorted softly and glared slightly at the tabletop.

"Four and counting. We're getting richer by the day, or should I say, wedding, but I honestly don't really care about what she does. Most of the time she's off managing 'the business'." This was why Harry felt so connected to Blaise; they both had abusive or neglectful mothers, but fortunately for Harry Nagini had been there for him. Blaise had no one, which is why he turned out the way he did, Harry mused silently, though he knew that no matter what the other said it still hurt Blaise for his mother to ignore him. He turned away from the conversation—which had switched to Quidditch—and absently watched magic folk meander by, immersed in their own little worlds.

Harry had noticed a definite difference in the way people acted since—_He_—died. It took a few days, but after that incident a year or so ago his friends had finally managed to coax him out of hiding and into the sun once more.

Their first visit had been to Diagon Alley, on a day much like this one; Harry, who had been starting to see that there might be more to life and that all wasn't lost when in the company of his comrades, had felt all his goodwill be crushed when they happened upon that scene:

Everywhere in the streets people were celebrating, even days after _His_ defeat. Magically summoned streamers were falling from the sky like rain, raucous music was playing and all the shops had closed down so that the owners could join in. Harry had grabbed the wall just inside the Alley and fought the urge to wretch, he was so distraught. Afterwards when they returned to the Manor Harry had locked himself into his room, reinforcing the locks and warding the perimeter so no one could reach him. It had taken a long time and much gentle persuasion from Nagini to come back out again. Harry realized that today was the first day he had stepped off the Malfoy grounds since then.

He found it odd. He wasn't really bothered now, though that might have something to do with the fact that everything was pretty much normal again.

Pretty much. Such a simple term, to be used for such a thing. His world wasn't completely whole; it was missing some of its most vital components, and what hurt him most was the fact that the world seemed to be celebrating that.

Harry clicked his jaw tightly and abandoned his morose thoughts when the ice cream arrived, focusing on losing himself within the sweet confines of chocolate and vanilla swirl. The group ate in general silence, broken every now and again by a small conversation between Draco and Theo. Harry noticed Blaise shooting him concerned looks whenever the other two became occupied and it annoyed him. His depression wasn't _that_ obvious, was it?

"I say, look at that girl! I didn't know beavers could walk on two legs!" Harry was jolted violently away from his sugar-induced daydreams and stared in bewilderment at Theo, who merely pointed to the far end of the street. Harry twisted his body in his seat to see.

A girl that could be no older than they was coming out of Flourish and Blotts, fully laden with large and heavy books. A mass of bushy brown hair just barely crested over the bundle in her arms, and Harry could tell by the way she was dressed she was Muggleborn. Two adults—presumably her parents—followed her out of the shop, her father trying his best to take the heavy load off his daughter. To Harry's surprise she simply turned her body away, refusing to allow him access to her cache. She reminded Harry of a dragon guarding its hoarded treasure trove.

A villainous cackle turned his attention to Draco, who was watching the three with such obvious hate and disgust that Harry was sure everyone in the immediate area could feel it.

"_Mudbloods_," the blond spat venomously, watching the family make its way down the street with the focused attention of a cobra. "_They're_ the reason we lost. _They're_ the reason the Dark Lord is dead." Theo flinched in horror at Draco's blatant disregard for Harry, and shot the raven haired boy a look that told him plainly that Draco didn't mean what he said. Blaise twitched slightly in his chair, leaning forward to carefully dissect Harry's response.

Thoroughly uncomfortable with the scrutiny, Harry shot Draco a dark look before turning away, intending to drop the topic completely. Blaise, obviously satisfied, leaned back in his chair again and polished off the remains of his melted raspberry-chocolate blast. The muggle-born and her family rounded the corner and disappeared from sight, and the tension eased off Draco's features, though some of his earlier revulsion remained. He seemed to completely forget his earlier remark, and Harry had no intention of reminding him. His mind unwillingly flew to the details of his recurring nightmare, and he hastily shoveled the rest of his ice cream down his throat, attempting to drown out the images and voices.

* * *

The smell of feathers and things better off unnamed wafted through Eyelops Owl Emporium, but Harry didn't mind. He wandered through the rows of birds hooting and ruffling their plumage, competing for his attention. The others had gone on to the Magical Menagerie, but Harry wanted an owl. He didn't have anyone to send letters to, per se, but he liked the idea of having one.

So far Harry had not found a single owl he liked. Most were too pushy or too haughty for his tastes. The boy was about to turn around and leave, believing he would have been better off at the other shop with his friends when a flash of white caught his eye. He maneuvered between shelves and stopped in front of a cage that was secluded in the shadowy back.

Before him was the most beautiful owl he had ever seen; with glossy, snow white feathers and gleaming amber eyes, Harry felt his breath being taken away. The snowy owl cocked its head to the side curiously, giving him a once over before hooting at him softly. Harry wondered why such a magnificent creature would be way back here where no one could see her.

"Ah, found that girl, did'ja? No good id'll do ya. Won't answer to no one, this one. Always flyin' back 'ere after she's been bought. Can 'ever keep her in a home." Harry turned around to the see a worker in the store, eyeing him speculatively.

"I don't understand." Harry responded politely, keeping one eye over his shoulder on the striking owl behind him. "You mean she escapes from her new owners and comes back here?"

The man nodded, giving his a crooked albeit sincere smile. "Tha's right. 'Ever can keep her sold. But you look like yer interested. Now, lemme warn ya," he said sternly, his visage turning serious. "Iffa she's up and flown off, we ain't responsible for it. You buy her, you responsible. Got it?" Harry nodded. "Good. Well then, iffa ya wan' her bring her up front. I'll ring it up." The man turned away to return to his post at the counter and Harry gently grabbed the handle of the owl's cage, smiling slightly when she nipped at his fingers in a friendly manner.

* * *

It was close to late afternoon when the quartet entered the dusty atmosphere of Ollivander's (their last stop of the day), the orange sun shining radiantly through the glass windows and casting hazy glows across the shelves of boxes lining the walls. Draco took up post by the door, watching people go by with a hawk's gaze while Theo plopped down on the spindly chair in the corner, jumping slightly at the noise it made under his weight. Blaise accompanied Harry up to the counter. Harry reached for the bell, but Blaise's hand stopped him. Harry gave him a questioning look, and Blaise took a deep breath before shooting Draco a discreet glance.

"I just wanted to say that I'm proud of you for not attacking Draco back there," he said at last, meaning lacing his words heavily. "You had every right to, but you didn't. For that I'm thankful. We would have caused a scene, a bad one, so I'm glad you made the choice you did." Blaise dropped his hand from Harry's outstretched arm and retreated back a few steps, his arms behind his back and posture rigid like it always was. The mask was back on his face, but the feeling behind his eyes was still evident. Harry nodded at him speechlessly. Blaise never spoke with such emotion unless he absolutely meant what he said. Harry watched him for another moment before ringing the bell on the counter. The sound cut sharply through the still air of the room, and Harry heard a crunch behind him that told the raven haired boy that Theo had toppled off his chair in surprise.

As if on cue a far older man stepped through the back door, looking over each of them carefully as he approached. When at last he stood before Harry Ollivander—for Harry could only assume it was he—examined him closely with saddened eyes.

_Saddened?_ Harry wondered. _Why would they be saddened_?

"I've been waiting for such a chance, Mr. Morgan." Ollivander said suddenly, his misty, moon-like eyes meeting Harry's nervous emerald ones. "Yes. For far too long…I almost thought you would not be coming. But I see now I was wrong. Yes…" Ollivander's eyes traveled over the group again, looking through each of them with the ease of a professional. "Yes…Which one of you will be first?"

They each went through the process; every wand tried piling high on the spindly chair Theo had evacuated earlier. Harry hung at the back of the cluster, wiping his hands anxiously on his shirt. Finally, Ollivander beckoned Harry forward and his friends retreated to the door to wait for him. Harry was the only one left who needed a wand.

Ollivander's eyes lit on him as he cautiously approached. "Ah. It's time for you, now, is it? Well then, hurry up, we haven't got all day. Which is your wand arm?" Harry held his right limb out in front of him and with a snap of the old man's fingers a tape measure on the counter sprung to life, beginning to take Harry's measures as the wand maker moved down the shelves of boxes. Harry was starting to get irritated at the thing buzzing around him (it was currently measuring his waist, a measurement he didn't want or need to know) when Ollivander returned, a box tucked under his arm.

"You may stop now." The tape crumpled lifelessly to the floor. "Well Mr. Morgan, let's try this one. Dragon heartstring, 12 ½ inches, willow. Give it a wave, go on…"

Feeling stupid, Harry took the wand from the man, but no sooner had he grabbed it the wand was ripped from him and Ollivander hurried back among the shelves, muttering to himself. Harry sighed and rocked back on his heels, shooting a longing glance to the setting sun outside. He wanted to go _home_ already…

Ollivander ran him through many wands—at least twice as many as the others went through combined. By the end of the one hundredth wand Harry tried the wand maker was grinning widely, his eyes gleaming happily. "Tricky customer, eh? I wonder…Maybe…Hmmm…" Ollivander deposited the box he was currently holding under his arm on the counter and walked off to the back room, calling over his shoulder for Harry to wait a moment. When the man was gone Harry's shoulder slumped from the short reprieve and he glanced behind him to see how his friends were doing. Blaise was undaunted, resting his back against the wall with the air of someone who had all the time in the world. Theo and Draco had challenged each other to a game of portable chess (something Theo carried around at all times). His new snowy owl hooted at him reassuringly from her (the shopkeeper told him she was female) position by the rest of his purchases, resting safely by Blaise.

The soft thump of footsteps alerted Harry to Ollivander's return, and he turned around to see the wand maker approach him holding a container so carefully Harry thought for one wild moment that something sacred and priceless must be within it. However he restrained his curiosity and shot the man a questioning look, inclining his head slightly towards the package. Ollivander held it out to him carefully.

"There is a wand in here, Mr. Morgan," he said in a hushed whisper, sending a seedy glance towards Harry's friends as if testing their loyalty to the Dark Heir. "A wand that has been in my family since we started the family tradition of wand-making. It was one of the first my ancestors made, and widely considered one of the best." Ollivander painstakingly opened the rusted lid of the box, the worn hinges creaking with strain from such a simple action. Ollivander reached in and pulled out a dusk-colored wand. He rolled it around in his hands lovingly as he set the container down, holding it out for Harry to try. "Mahogany, 12 inches, basilisk heartstring." His voice dropped to a hushed, awed whisper. "It took many lives to down the creature whose heart resides in this wand. The King of Serpents. A truly powerful tool…" he hesitated for only a moment before pressing it into Harry's hands.

He felt it immediately. Harry sensed something chained and trapped struggle free from its bonds within the wooden shaft in his hands, and warmth spread up through his limbs in a way Butterbeer did; however, Harry was sure nothing could compare to this feeling. The lights in the shop flickered madly and the baubles around the room rattled ominously from a sudden quake of power before quietly settling back into place. Harry let out the breath he didn't even know he was holding and gazed back at Ollivander, truly humbled. The man's eyes, almost glowing in the dim light, were glassy with an emotion Harry couldn't identify.

"Use it well. This wand can be made to do many great things…After all; He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things…Terrible, yes, but great." The compliment made Harry smile slightly. "I believe we can expect great things from you, too…Mr. Potter."

**

* * *

A/N: Good to see you all liked the last chapter. I was considering having them go down Knockturn Alley, but I decided it wasn't necessary. And you lot are probably going to kill me for the suspense of the last line in this chapter.**

**Hedwig makes her first official appearance in this chapter! See? He has a pet now, and personally I love Hedwig. **

**The Muggleborn and her family mentioned in this chapter is indeed Hermione, in case you were wondering. You see the first real signs of Pureblood attitude out of the group here, which will be major in Hogwarts.**

**Sadly, that's about all that needs to be talked about in this A/N…It's unnaturally short.**


	3. Requiem for a Muggleborn

**A Change in History: The Philosopher's Stone**

_A HP Fanfiction_

Disclaimer: I do not own HP.

**Chapter Three: Requiem for a Muggleborn**

* * *

"This is great. Absolutely bloody _great_. We're going to be late!"

"Hey, it's not my fault. If _someone_ just had enough sense to ask their own parents instead of being thick we wouldn't be in this mess."

"Oi, shut it, Nott. This isn't going to help."

"Make me!"

"It would be my pleasure!"

"Would you two _shut up_ already? I'm trying to think over here."

"It's no use, Damien. They'll never stop."

"Oh, like you're so much better, _Blaise_. All you do is hover over in that corner of yours and mope."

"_Pardon_? I'm sure I didn't just hear what I thought I heard. Are you accusing me of weakness, Draco?"

"What if I am?"

"_Shut up already! _Merlin! No wonder your parents left you here!"

Draco glared at Damien and crossed his arms, sticking his nose into the air defiantly. Blaise sneered threateningly at the blonde, but with a warning glance from Damien he lowered his fists, swallowing a deep breath of air.

"Now that everyone's not going mad," Damien started calmly, "Let's slow down and think for a moment. Draco's parents left us here because they believed us capable of finding the platform ourselves. Let's try not to make them regret that decision. Now, what do we know?"

Blaise spoke up, still glaring at Draco. "The platform is # 9 ¾ and apparently invisible to muggles." Damien nodded.

"Good. Now, how exactly are we going to find the platform?" Blaise opened his mouth before quickly closing it again, sending a reluctance glance for help towards Draco; the other boy looked just as stumped as he was.

"Er, maybe, I don't know…It's somewhere between 9 and 10?" Theo's timid reply earned him a wan smile from Damien, but Draco scoffed.

"Pah. '_Between 9 and 10…_' That's crazy. Look." Draco pointed to the solid brick separating platforms nine and ten some feet off to their right in the crowded station. "See? It's _solid_. You know, when it's impossible to go through something?"

"Cut it with the sarcasm, Draco." Blaise asserted impatiently. His boot was tapping out a staccato rhythm on the linoleum beneath their feet. "Maybe Theo's right. Think about it. This is magic we're dealing with here; who's to say that the brick isn't very well an illusion to keep muggles out? I say it's worth a try." Draco sneered at him.

"Fine, be my guest. Just don't be offended when I laugh at you after you smack face first into solid rock." Draco grabbed the handle of his trolley and steered himself slightly away from the small group, grumbling but watching with obvious anticipation. Damien glanced at the magically-powered watch wrapped around his wrist and sighed.

"Ten to eleven," he announced nervously. "If we're going to do this we'd better do it now."

Theo nodded and took charge. Wheeling his trolley to the center of the walkway, he evened himself up with the brick wall in-between platforms nine and ten. Blaise gave him a small thumbs-up in encouragement.

Damien watched with slight trepidation as their stringy friend slowly sped up, breaking out into an uncontrollable run not five feet from the concrete blockade before him. Draco leaned forward against the handlebar of his cart eagerly, only to have his face fall with disappointment when Theo slid through the brick like water. Damien let out a shaky sigh of relief and pushed his cart forward to mimic Theo, absently checking his watch once again. Eight to eleven.

When Damien emerged on the other side of the barrier he was assaulted with a cacophony of noises and sights. People scrambled around everywhere, some pushing trolleys like his and yet others hauling trunks that looked particularly heavy into the blazingly scarlet red train stopped in its tracks. A sign swung haphazardly in the billowing smoke of the locomotive announcing his destination as the Hogwarts Express—Platform 9 ¾. Damien sighed in respite and pushed his cart towards the train, knowing the others were likely not very far behind him.

Pulling the load up the steps of the train proved to be a challenge. Not only was it incredibly heavy, but he also had to carry his owl's cage—all without using magic! Damien grimaced in strain. How ever did the muggles manage it?

Finally, after much struggling and swearing, Damien managed to drag his trunk up the steps and into the corridor. He leaned against it to take a quick breather, looking down both ways of the hall. Which way to go?

It took him awhile to find an empty compartment, but when he did he unceremoniously dropped his luggage on the floor, falling onto the plush seats. He lay there for a few moments, eyes unfocused as he let the commotion from outside the train slip unheard through his ears before he sat up slightly, running a hand through his hair.

"I wonder where the others are."

* * *

Draco wandered down the hall of the train, pushing past other students rudely and sneering at anyone who attempted to make him apologize. Really! Did they not know who he was? A frown twisted his pale, pointed features. Muggles and their nasty spawn. Always mucking up where they're not wanted…

So caught up in his thoughts was he that Draco walked right past an open compartment, and he forced himself to snap out of his reverie before backtracking. Greg and Vincent—Goyle and Crabbe, respectively—sent him stupefied looks. Draco sighed in exasperation before grudgingly stepping into the compartment. His friends—the real ones, anyways—were nowhere to be seen, and Draco refused to be caught dead waiting in an empty apartment. Draco settled his luggage by the door as he closed it behind him, and didn't see the two's frantic and terrified faces until it was too late.

"Oh, Draco! Where have you been? I've been waiting for you!" Draco allowed a cringe of horror slip past his mask in surprise as he felt a pair of slightly pudgy arms encircle his neck and crush his windpipe like a boa constrictor. He ripped at Pansy's sleeves with his perfectly trimmed nails in panic and shot the two gargoyles in the compartment an almost pleading look. They simply looked back stupidly.

'_Great. Just great._'

* * *

Blaise was _not_ a social person; anyone who knew him could tell you that to your face. However, these poor misbegotten fools on the train _didn't_ know, and made the terrible mistake of attempting to lure him into conversation, then deciding he was best off as a wall decoration.

Blaise sighed as the mindless chatter of the girl in blonde pigtails and the stiff boy washed over him in a tidal wave, with no opening for him to interrupt. He pressed his forehead against the coolness of the window, allowing a small moment of un-Blaise-like behavior to take over before deciding to end it. The pair of idiots jumped as his palm slammed loudly against the glass, turning to him with wide eyes.

"_Shut. Up. Already. Merlin!_" He hissed. Blaise smacked his head against the glass again, hoping to knock himself unconscious so as to avoid having to put up with them. The boy sniffed in a very prim manner, surveying him with obvious distaste.

"Really, how rude. We were in the middle of a discussion. Have you no manners?" The girl, still wide-eyed, slowly reached out to place a hand on her friend's arm.

"Ernie, please don't. He's probably just upset that we didn't include him." Ernie's face lit up in realization, and he patted the hand that still rested timidly on his arm in a companionable fashion.

"My dear Hannah, that's it exactly! I'm sorry, my fellow, I didn't mean to ignore you. So, which House do you think you'll end up in?"

Blaise groaned aloud and slammed his head against the glass once more wishing for it to take his awareness away, but alas, it did not. "Just kill me," he pled in a murmur to the heavens, not really intending for it to be heard.

"Pardon? What did you say, chap?"

* * *

Theo was a social person; anyone who knew him could tell you that with a straight face. However, when it came to girls, he got tongue-tied. He wouldn't deny it.

So why, then, was he in a compartment packed full of females? That was a very good question—one to which Theo would very much appreciate an answer to, and very quickly. A girl who was watching him from across the compartment giggled and whispered something to her friends, pointing to him. They turned to him and giggled also, replying behind their hands while sending him small glances.

Yes. Very, very quickly.

Theo glanced around the compartment, wondering if he could gnaw off the arm that was ensnared with one of theirs against his will and make a break for the hall before their claws managed to dig themselves into his robes and drag him back. The girls seemed to sense his thoughts, because they moved in closer with, he would admit, very evilly girlish smiles. Theo looked down in defeat and they backed off slightly, giving the poor boy room to breathe. Theo took this moment to look back on how he got into this situation.

Oh yes. The Chocolate Frogs…

_

* * *

(Theo trudged down the corridor, his heavy trunk thumping onto the floor behind him with every footfall. There were no empty compartments; all of them had some form of older student who glared at him as he passed by. Theo sighed. At this rate he would never get to sit down…_

_Giggling issued from his left and his head snapped in that direction. Two girls were watching him from the window in the door of their compartment, amused smiles lighting up their faces. One of them—a brunette who wasn't too bad looking—beckoned him into the compartment and, in relief, Theo obeyed. He settled his luggage into the corner and sat down next to the brunette. Big mistake._

"_Aw, he's so cute! Isn't he, Patricia?" Patricia—a blonde with the emblem of Gryffindor on the breast of her robes—smiled._

"_He is, Linda. I didn't think they came that small. He's like a mouse." Theo smiled nervously, wondering what in the name of Merlin they were talking about. He sat next to them in uncomfortable silence as they nattered on about some 'cute' Hufflepuff boy they'd been stalking for the past few months, staying only because they let him have free reign of the mound of Chocolate Frogs they had accumulated in the corner of the compartment. Theo didn't have a problem with this—until more started pouring in._

_Girls soon crowded the compartment, exchanging bits of gossip and cooing over him and his 'adorableness'—which Theo presumed was his chocolate-covered face. Somehow, Theo didn't think that was a real word. '_Meh, girls are weird.'

_It didn't really get dangerous until they started to swarm him, pelting him with questions from all sides. 'This is your first year, right?' 'What House do you think you'll be in?' 'Are you a pureblood? Your robes are really nice!' on and on.)_

* * *

Their gossiping started up again, and Theo couldn't help but wonder as he polished off the last of the sweets where his friends were. They definitely had to be doing better than him.

* * *

Damien had sat alone in his compartment for quite awhile when a knock came at the door. The boy looked up, curiosity spilling across his face as he stood to answer. He hoped it was one of his friends.

Nope. Instead, a girl with a mass of bushy brown hair—about his age, if the height was anything to go by—stood in the doorframe, hand raised, prepared to nervously knock again. Damien tilted his head to the side, waiting for the girl to speak. Something about her seemed familiar.

The girl blushed at being caught and quickly lowered her hand behind her back, switching her gaze to her polished dressed shoes.

"Er, I'm sorry for bothering you, but, ah, there are no more empty compartments and, ah, I was wondering if I could, maybe, ah, sit in here with you?" Another blush skimmed across her pale face—proof she hadn't been in the sun much—and her fingers found their way to her front, nervously knotting and unknotting. "Nobody else seems to want a first year in their compartments."

Damien studied the girl for a moment before silently standing to the side, allowing her entrance. A relieved smile lit her face and she stepped inside, dragging her _very_ large trunk behind her. Damien shut the door as she settled her belongings overhead. Damien returned to his seat, reclining on the plush seats and staring at the ceiling in boredom. The girl glanced at him slightly and fingered the book she had extracted from her trunk absently.

"I'm Hermione Granger, by the way." She spoke up suddenly, looking at him expectantly. Damien spared her a nonchalant glance out of the corner of his eyes before returning to his vigil on the plaster spread across the roof.

"Damien Morgan," he grunted. She smiled at him slightly before cracking her book open, balancing it lovingly on her knees and burying her bushy head within the pages. Several long minutes passed between the two in silence before Damien sat up on his elbows, peering at the title of her tome.

"'_Hogwarts, A History_', eh?" Hermione looked up at him in surprise before glancing back at her book as if to make sure he was talking about that.

"Oh, yes, it is." Excitement broadened across her features. "It's fascinating! Did you know that the ceiling is enchanted to look like the night sky outside, and that the paintings actually _move_?" Damien sat up fully, staring at her hard.

'_She didn't know the paintings moved? A Muggleborn? Wait…_' his mind flashed to the day his friends and he had journeyed to Diagon Alley, and the small, bushy-haired girl with the armload of books. '_That was her, then?_'

Damien would never forget the words Draco had uttered that day. 'They're _the reason we lost._ They're_ the reason the Dark Lord is dead.'_

Damien's jaw clenched angrily as he glared at the girl across from him—she had returned to her book in his silence—before forcing himself to relax. '_Self-control,_' he reminded himself. '_Self-control. Don't do anything rash. She may even be useful._' That didn't stop him from glaring at her, though.

"So…" Damien snapped to attention. "What House do you think you'll end up in?" Ah, yes; _the_ question. Damien reclined on his seat again, thoughtful, if not still a bit resentful.

"Slytherin, probably," he offered, expecting her to gasp in horror or some other such nonsense. "Though Ravenclaw would be a good second, I'm pretty sure I'll end up in Slytherin. You?" He didn't really want to know, but politeness seemed to demand it. She flushed and looked away.

"Probably Ravenclaw. I'm a, a bookworm…" she muttered, burying her face in _Hogwarts, A History_ again. Damien smirked at her, though he knew she couldn't see it. '_Bothersome Muggleborn. Trouble, the lot of them._'

* * *

The rest of the train ride was pure torture for Damien. Every time he looked at Hermione his fingers would close around the familiar handle of his wand before he could stop himself, and it took all of his willpower to let go. It was much later in the afternoon when Damien felt the train slowly rumble to a stop beneath him. Hermione looked up from her book and closed it before retrieving her belongings. Damien pulled his from the overhang also, leaving the compartment without a backwards glance. Hermione stared after him in confusion before following, hauling her heavy trunk behind her with difficulty, if not determination.

It wasn't raining when they stepped down from the scarlet steam train, but the dark overcast clouds above signaled it would be before the evening was over. Damien glanced around, wondering where he was supposed to go. His question was quickly answered as a large gas lantern swung far overhead and a rough voice boomed through the air.

"Firs years! Firs' years over here!" Damien glanced up at the sound and approached its source, Hermione dogging at his heels timidly. The sight that greeted him was surprising, to say the least. Standing at least ten feet high by Damien's reckoning, his face was hidden by a long tangle of hair and a wild mane of a beard. His eyes gleamed out of their peepholes, black as beetles but friendly.

First years gathered around him in a large, jostling mass, and Damien pulled Hermione with him to the outskirts. There was no way he'd risk getting trampled by this lot.

"C'mon, follow me—any more firs' years? Mind yer step, now! Firs' years follow me! Oh, and leave yer luggage here, mind." Damien exchanged odd glances with his equally odd companion before doing as they were told, leaving their trunks on the platform.

The group followed after the swinging lantern in the gloom, slipping and losing their footing down a steep, narrow path.

"Yeh'll get yer firs' sight o' Hogwarts in a sec," the giant of a man called to them through the murky darkness, sounding more and more like a foghorn in the closed space. "jus' round this bend here."

Gasps of delight rippled through the crowd ahead of them, and Damien couldn't help but gape himself as the pair turned the corner. The path had led them to the bank of a great, glassy lake, obsidian in the night. What could only be Hogwarts stood majestically atop a high mountain across the still water, the windows blending in almost completely with the star spangled sky behind it. Large towers shot into the air, glowing slightly with the radiance of the light echoing from the moon hanging like a cloud over the castle. Damien was snapped out of his awestruck reverie by the booming voice of the guide.

"No more'n four to a boat!" Damien cast his gaze around, trying to find the boats the giant spoke of, until Hermione tugged on his sleeve and pointed to a fleet of small rowboats anchored ashore before them. Damien nodded to her in thanks before striding forward; pulling Hermione after him so she wouldn't be lost in the sea of first years flocking to the boats, if only out of necessity. They clambered into their own, followed by two first years that Damien didn't recognize.

"Everyone in?" the giant shouted somewhere up ahead of them. He had gotten his own boat, due to his wide girth. "Right then—FORWARD!"

Damien was jerked back by the sudden movement underneath him as the boat took off, gliding silently through the water of the smooth lake. Silence reigned like a storm cloud, everyone watching the castle loom closer through the dark. They sailed nearer to the cliff on which the school rested.

"Heads down!" The guide called. Damien pulled Hermione down with him just in time; the curtain of ivy swept harmlessly over their heads. Damien righted and the brunette followed his example, huffing quietly at the treatment. Damien ignored her. The fleet slid into a dark tunnel which Damien could only assume led to directly underneath the school. The boat bumped gently against the rocky shore, and Damien clambered out without preamble, Hermione following him closely. Damien took that moment to look around for his friends, but he couldn't spot them anywhere. He sighed in disappointment and waved off the curious look his companion shot him. The guide was checking the boats as the new students left them, and paused at one.

"Oy, is this your toad?" He called. A boy stopped in his tracks and silently turned back, accepting the warty creature from the guide without a word. The giant scratched his head slightly in confusion.

"Right then, follow me," He picked up the lantern and led them through a passage cut through the hard rock of the cliff, finally ending in the shadow of the castle. Damien pushed to the front and Hermione glared at his back for his rudeness, but pursued him nevertheless. The guide stopped in front of the huge oaken front doors, turning around for a moment to make certain everyone was still there. He nodded his great shaggy head and knocked three times on the door.

It swung open immediately, making Hermione jump like a skittish cat beside Damien. A tall, dark haired lady stood in the doorframe, swathed in elegant emerald robes. Sternness marked her otherwise pleasant features, and Damien couldn't help but be reminded of his father. His heart clenched at the thought, but he shook it away and forced himself to focus. Now was not the time to drift.

"The firs' years, Professor McGonagall," the guide declared, waving his dustbin lid sized hand over their heads.

"Thank you, Hagrid. I will take them from here." So that was his name? Damien made a mental note of that and followed after her, sparing the Entrance Hall only a minimal glance, though Hermione was gaping like a fish. The Keep had been _far_ more impressive. Damien followed after her dutifully as she led them to the side of the hall, the sounds of thousands of voices talking at once bouncing off the flagged stones beneath his feet from the large doors across from them. Professor McGonagall instead showed them into a much more compact, empty chamber off the hall. It was very much crowded, with all of them in there at once, but Damien suffered it in silence.

"Welcome to Hogwarts," the woman began. "The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your house will be like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your house, sleep in your house dormitory, and spend free time in your house common room.

"The four houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin." Damien grinned slightly at that last one and Hermione watched him closely. "Each house has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your house points, while any rule-breaking will lose house points. At the end of the year, the house with the most points is awarded the house cup, a great honor. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever house becomes yours.

"The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting."

Her eyes managed to find their way to Damien over the sea of students, and she eyed his messy hair in disapproval. Damien reached up and fixed it, uncomfortable with her scrutiny.

"I shall return when we are ready for you," she finished. "Please wait quietly."

Well, Damien would have no trouble with that. He sighed and rocked back on his heels, staring at the ceiling in boredom. He didn't hear the commotion going on behind him.

"Hey you, move it, coming through—"

"Theo, that's rude—"

"Do I look like I care? Damien!" An arm slung itself around his shoulders and Damien jumped in surprise. Theo grinned at him impishly. Blaise rolled his eyes from his place behind the exuberant one. "Where were you? We were looking everywhere!"

Hermione hovered in the background, unsure of what to do and awkward with that fact. Damien smiled at them in relief. "Hey you lot. I was looking for you, too. I hope you didn't get yourselves into trouble."

Theo scoffed. "Never." He suddenly seemed to notice Hermione's presence and he turned to grin at her, sending Damien a sly look. "Found yourself a girl already? Wow, you move fast." Hermione flushed in embarrassment and Damien glared at him, thwacking him upside the head.

"No, you idiot. She's a…friend. Hermione, this is Theo, and the brooding shadow behind him is Blaise." Hermione waved shyly before turning away, taking a sudden interest in the wall. Theo shook his head.

"So Damien, you ready to become a Slytherin?" Hermione's attention returned to the conversation almost immediately.

"Yeah, definitely. I suppose the rest of you will be there as well?"

"Oh course! Can you _imagine_ Draco's reaction if he was put anywhere else? He'd bring the roof down!"

The conversation was cut short as quite a few people near the back of the crowd suddenly screamed. Damien's wand whipped into his hand, though his first instinct was to perform wandless magic instead, but he was forced to put it down. Several ghosts—probably around twenty—had phased through the back wall, arguing over _something_.

"Forgive and forget, I say, we ought to give him a second chance—" a fat little man in a worn robe was preaching.

"My dear Friar, haven't we given Peeves all the chances he deserves? He gives us all a bad name and you know, he's not really even a ghost—I say, what are you all doing here?" The ghost who was speaking suddenly took note of them, but that wasn't what caught Damien's attention. He was wearing ruffles. And _tights. _'_What in the name of Merlin?_' None of the first years spoke, still too shocked to make a sound. The monk from before smiled at them, friendlessness radiating from his translucent form.

"New students! About to be Sorted, I suppose?" Hermione nodded quietly, her eyes round. "Hope to see you in Hufflepuff! My old house, you know." Theo and Blaise shared an amused snigger at the enthusiastic spirit's expense, but that was drowned out.

"Move along now," a sharp voice that was distinctly McGonagall's echoed around the chamber. "The Sorting Ceremony's about to start." The spirits, taking this as their cue to leave, left one by one through the nearest wall. "Now, form a line," she instructed tersely, "and follow me."

Damien got in line behind Hermione, Theo and Blaise after him, and the group shuffled single-file out of the chamber and across the foyer, into the Great Hall.

Damien was reminded almost forcefully of the ballroom in the Keep. Candles, candles _everywhere_, and gold glittering off of almost every surface. Hundreds of faces turned to them as they entered, and Hermione gulped loudly enough for Damien to hear her. At the front of the hall a long table faced the other four, and it took no leap of the imagination to figure that was where the staff ate. McGonagall led them there, halting them in plain view of the whole Hall. The stern woman placed a four-legged stool in front of the line, a ragged, patched up pointed wizard's hat resting atop it. For a few moments there was complete silence. Damien was beginning to feel the first effects of boredom when the hat twitched, and the boy snapped to attention, regarding the hat with a quiet intensity. The large rip near the brim opened up, and Damien felt his jaw drop as the hat burst into song:

"_Oh, you may not think I'm pretty,_

_But don't judge by what you see,_

_I'll eat myself if you can find_

_A smarter hat than me._

_You can keep your bowlers black,_

_Your top hats sleek and tall,_

_For I'm the Hogwarts Sorting Hat_

_And I can cap them all._

_There's nothing in your head_

_The Sorting Hat can't see,_"

Damien felt a surge of unease in his gut and he uncomfortably adjusted his collar.

"_So try me on and I will tell you_

_Where you ought to be._

_You might belong in Gryffindor,_

_Where dwell the brave at heart,_

_Their daring, nerve and chivalry_

_Set Gryffindors apart;_

_You might belong in Hufflepuff,_

_Where they are just and loyal,_

_Those patient Hufflepuffs are true_

_And unafraid of toil;_

_Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw,_

_If you've a ready mind,_

_Where those of wit and learning,_

_Will always find their kind;_

_Or perhaps in Slytherin_

_You'll make your real friends,_

_Those cunning folk use any means_

_To achieve their ends._

_So put me on! Don't be afraid!_

_And don't get in a flap!_

_You're in safe hands (though I have none)_

_For I'm a Thinking Cap!_"

The Hall burst into applause, and though Damien didn't really see anything to applaud, he did so out of politeness. It bowed to all four of the student tables before falling silent again. McGonagall stepped forward, a long roll of parchment gripped in her hand.

"When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted," she explained. Hermione sighed in relief and Damien smirked at her.

"Abbott, Hannah!" A girl with blonde pigtails moved forward hesitantly, and Blaise flinched. Damien raised an eyebrow at him, but the dark-skinned boy simply shook his head. Damien returned his attention to the stool just in time to hear the hat call out "HUFFLEPUFF!" The table on the right cheered loudly. The Fat Friar waved merrily at Hannah as she moved to join them.

"Bones, Susan!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!" Susan sat down next to Hannah, smiling in nervous relief.

"Boot, Terry!"

"RAVENCLAW!" The table second from the left cheered now. Terry shook hands with several of the older Ravenclaws as he moved to sit with them. "Brocklehurst, Mandy" was also a Ravenclaw, but "Brown, Lavender" was the first new Gryffindor. Damien felt his nose curl up in distaste. Damien was turning away from the table when he did a double-take; two red-headed twins were catcalling at the new Gryffindor girl, and Damien would have to be both blind and deaf not to recognize the two.

'_So Fred and George became Gryffs, huh? Not much of a surprise there._' Damien returned his attention to the Sorting a bit reluctantly.

"Bulstrode, Millicent" was the first Slytherin of the year, and Damien looked almost longingly to the long table of silver, green and black clad students.

"Finch-Fletchley, Justin!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

"What's with all the Hufflepuffs?" Theo grumped, crossing his arms irritably. "You'd think there weren't enough of them." Hermione scowled at him in disapproval, but he disregarded her.

How long the hat took on each student seemed to differ; for some it didn't take long, but for others it seemed an eternity before they were sorted. "Finnigan, Seamus" took almost a minute before being called a Gryffindor.

"Granger, Hermione!" Damien focused on the hat once more as Hermione left the line, giving him a nervous smile. She settled herself almost primly on the stool and the hat was lowered over her bushy head, blocking her eyes from the Hall.

Hermione took even longer than Finnigan; at least two minutes. Theo had begun to snicker and joke about her not belonging when the rip near the brim of the hat opened.

"SLYTHERIN!" Silence. Absolute silence. Hermione hesitantly pulled the hat off of her head, but looked as if she dearly wished to put it back on the moment she did so. The whole Slytherin table was glaring at her murderously. It was no secret to them that she was Muggleborn; there were no wizard families by the name of 'Granger'. Damien felt a twinge of sympathy for the poor girl as McGonagall ushered her with an expression of pity to her House table. Hermione sat at the very end, where there were the least students. She looked positively miserable to Damien, though her eyes were gleaming strangely.

"Ouch," Theo muttered, eyeing her in pity. "That's gotta hurt." Blaise nodded in silent agreement. Damien scrutinized her intensely. She hadn't struck him as a Slytherin. Almost as if sensing his gaze, she looked up and met his eyes, but turned away almost immediately. He shrugged. He'd work out this mystery later.

The Sorting dragged on and on. When finally "Longbottom, Neville" was called the Hall grew completely silent again. The boy strode forward with a dark determination and put the hat on his head. Damien recalled that name from somewhere. Wasn't it the Longbottoms Aunt Bella and his two uncles had tortured to insanity, and had been imprisoned for? Damien watched the boy closely as he was proclaimed a Gryffindor—after much thought—and he moved to join his Housemates. It seemed his parents' fates had hit him hard. "MacDougal, Morag" was sorted after him, but Damien missed which house they were sorted into as he continued his vigil on the boy.

"Malfoy, Draco!" Damien jerked forward and stood on his tiptoes, trying to spot his friend over the sea of heads. Sure enough, a head of platinum blonde hair bobbed out from the rest of the crowd as Draco strut with all due confidence to the stool.

"So that's where the prat was," Theo remarked quietly. "What a show-off." Damien had to agree, especially when the hat had barely brushed the boy's hair before calling out "SLYTHERIN!"

"Big surprise," Damien muttered. Draco glared daggers at Hermione as he moved to join the older students at the end of the table opposite her, to gales of welcome. Hermione looked down at the tabletop sadly and Damien wanted to smack the boy. She was, after all, his Housemate now, whether or not she was Muggleborn. Damien was surprised to see Theo and Blaise scowling at him, too.

The Sorting dragged on even further, or at least it seemed that way to the raven-haired boy, and Damien felt his stomach rumble. "Moon" was sorted, and then Damien heard his name being called. He stepped forward, Theo giving him a quick thumbs up, and sat on the stool. He felt the rough material of the hat being lowered onto his head, and his vision cut off abruptly as the hat blocked his eyes from the rest of the Hall.

'_Hmm, what have we here? Interesting. The Dark Heir, here at Hogwarts. That's unusual. Now where to put you?'_

Damien silently chanted 'Slytherin' in his head, and the hat seemed to chuckle. '_Slytherin, my boy? Yes, I suppose I should have expected that. But there's so much more to you than that. You're brave, incredibly loyal, and highly intelligent. You would do anything for your friends, and anything for your father…_' Damien's fist clenched at the memory. '_Missing him, are you? That's a very human trait. You seem to fit a certain house better than Slytherin, to me. How about we put you in _GR—'

You do that, he told it silently, and I will personally slaughter everyone in this building and soak you in their blood until you're red yourself. The hat paused, the words half-formed, before abruptly it shut the rip near its brim again.

'_Well, since you won't take that, I'll have to put you somewhere else. I can't afford to put you in Slytherin, so it seems like the next best thing is _RAVENCLAW!'

Damien swore to himself silently as he heard the applause, and he ripped the hat off his head, glaring death at it. He stormed off to his House, but spared the Slytherin table a glance as he passed it. Draco looked stricken and betrayed, and Hermione…Hermione was pure white. She folded her arms and rested her head on them, dejected and lost. Damien sat at his table, shaking hands with people, plastering a fake smile on his features, but when he finally got a moment to himself he placed his head in his hands.

'_Great. Just. Bloody. Great._' Damien looked up as he felt an intense gaze almost pierce his back, and his eyes met those of one of the teacher's—the one wearing the turban or—Damien jolted in surprise—Severus, who was next to him, Damien couldn't tell which it came from. The Dark Heir felt a wave of dread wash over him, and he shuddered. What had he done, now?

**

* * *

A/N: Oh. My. Dear. _God_. You have _no _idea how much writer's block I've had to put up with. I only managed to get this chapter out through a sudden, and _much_ worshipped, stroke of inspiration. This was the worst case of writer's block I've ever had, but I've sworn to not give up on this story, and I won't, even if I have to _rip_ the inspiration out of my dead body! I've already put too much into planning for it to go to waste. So I apologize for how absurdly long it took me to get this up, so I merged two chapters together in order to give you more, as thanks for your patient waiting.**

**Like what I did with Hermione? I hadn't been intending that—she was originally going to go into Ravenclaw—but then I realized that putting her in Slytherin worked so much better. :) Now that I've got my inspiration back, expect the next chapter to (hopefully) be up within the next month or so. I need to pick up the beat again, badly…**


	4. A Different Perspective

**A Change in History: The Philosopher's Stone**

_A HP Fanfiction_

Disclaimer: I do not own HP.

**Chapter Four: A Different Perspective**

* * *

"Nott, Theodore!"

Theo grimaced. "I hate that name," he muttered as he stumped forward, grumbling quietly to himself. Blaise watched him go before turning back to the Ravenclaw table. Damien didn't look too happy, but then again, neither was Draco, or Hermione, for that matter. He felt his eyes narrow on the last one. She should have been in Ravenclaw, from what he could gather of her demeanor. She probably wished she was there right now, too, he'd bet.

"SLYTHERIN!"

Blaise snorted. _That _was to be expected. Theo traipsed off to sit beside Draco. The blonde reached up and yanked him viciously onto the bench next to him, leaning in and hissing in his ear. Blaise turned away in slight disgust. No need to wonder what was going on there; Draco was fuming.

"Parkinson, Pansy!" The pug-nosed girl was almost immediately proclaimed a Slytherin and Blaise watched in abject amusement as the girl shoved Theo out of his seat, attaching herself like glue to Draco's robes. The boy flinched and Blaise cackled quietly to himself. He would admit that the blonde deserved it. Theo stood and glared at Pansy's back angrily before stomping off to Hermione's end of the table. The bushy haired Muggleborn glanced up at his approach and visibly brightened. Now that was interesting. Lonesome, was she? Her fault.

Two girls, twins, obviously, were sorted next; "Patil, Padma" went to Ravenclaw and took a seat across from Damien, leaning forward to engage him in conservation while her sister, "Patil, Parvati" flounced off to Gryffindor like a stuffed up peacock. Blaise sneered at her back, peeking at the red and gold clad students in revulsion. Were they _all_ like that?

"Perks, Sally-Anne" was proclaimed a Hufflepuff in the short time that Blaise had lost focus, and "Thomas, Dean" was also made a Gryffindor. "Turpin, Lisa" was the next Ravenclaw, and she positioned herself next to the Patil girl. Blaise noted that Damien's face was growing more annoyed by the second.

"Weasley, Ron" approached the stool now, and Blaise knew that he was next. He was the only one left standing, after all. The red haired boy was green by this point. Blaise sniggered. Weasley collapsed in relief when the hat finally shouted "GRYFFINDOR!" and Blaise stepped forward before his name was even called, giving the Professor holding the scroll a cold look as he seated himself and placed the hat on his head, not bothering to wait for her.

'_Well well well, what have we here?_' A hushed voice whispered in his ear. To his credit Blaise didn't even stiffen. '_Tough, aren't you? Intelligent, too. You would make a good Slytherin._'

Blaise hesitated, feeling as though he could see Damien sitting alone at the Ravenclaw table even though the heavy material of the hat was concealing his eyes.

'_Loyal. A good trait, but the decision is up to you. Ravenclaw or Slytherin? You cannot be in both._'

Blaise considered. His mother wanted him in Slytherin, as she had been, but Damien was by himself in Ravenclaw, and Blaise sought to be with his best friend. Which to choose? He could already feel a headache forming. Distantly his ears picked up the faint murmurs of the room beyond his view, and he wondered how long he had been up here already, drowning in the deafening silence. Ravenclaw or Slytherin?

The Hat could easily sense his indecision and carefully sifted through his mind, looking for something. Blaise was about to ask the thing what it thought it was doing when

* * *

'_His mother looked down at him, meeting his gaze in response to his unheard question. She seemed to tower over him, all dark skin and black hair and glittering eyes. A cold smile pulled at her full, painted lips as she regarded him._

"_Slytherin, of course," she purred, giving him a dangerous look, her already narrow eyes becoming slits in her heart-shaped face.. "You'd be worthless to me otherwise."'_

* * *

and

* * *

'_Blaise was ten again. Faintly he could hear Harry's tortured screams, his fists beating the ground brutally, and Theo and Draco looked at him with wide, lost eyes._

"_We stand by him," I told them silently, allowing my gaze to hold theirs for those few moments. They looked back, acceptance in their faces, and Draco stepped forward to help his family prepare for the trip back to their home with the distraught Heir. Blaise watched Harry for a moment, a sudden sadness pushing him to the brink of an endless chasm, before he turned away and forced himself to walk back to his mother and then-father.'_

* * *

'_Have you chosen?'_

Oh, he had.

'_Good. Then let it be—'_

"RAVENCLAW!"

Blaise let out a sigh of relief as the applause washed over him, allowing the old woman to take the hat from his head. Draco stared at him in confusion, but Blaise caught Theo's eye and the scrawny boy inclined his head slightly, nodding towards Damien. His comrade looked up as he drew near.

The inquiry came immediately. "Why didn't you go to Slytherin?"

Blaise hesitated only slightly in sitting beside his friend, ignoring the handshakes and congratulations offered from those around him before patting Damien on the shoulder.

"I wasn't about to leave you alone here with a bunch of girls." The two females in question purpled and glared at him from across the table, but he disregarded them. Damien gave him a heartfelt smile of gratitude as the Headmaster stood to address them.

Albus Dumbledore surveyed the room with a grandfatherly smile, his eyes twinkling brightly at the new students. Blaise could distinctly feel a dangerous aura rise from the boy next to him, but he refused to look in Damien's direction. He had to get himself under control on his own.

"Welcome! Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you!"

Blaise wasn't one to openly show emotions, but for this instant he allowed himself that privilege. He stared at the old man in puzzlement before a derisive snort tore him away. Damien glared at the Headmaster, an odd look in his eyes. For a fleeting moment Blaise wondered what his companion was thinking before he pushed it away, reluctantly clapping along with the rest of the students. Damien's hands didn't move from the tabletop.

The clinking of metal against metal brought his attention back to the present, and Blaise reached forward without the slightest hint of surprise to dish himself up some baked beans and roast beef, watching out of the corner of his eye as Damien did the same. Blaise picked up his fork and poked at the meat on the golden plate before him, wondering where to start. A cool draft wafted through the back of his robes, though, and he jumped, startled. A tinkling giggle floated to his ears, and he twisted around in his seat to look. The Grey Lady—for that was the universal name for the ghost of Ravenclaw—stood—as much as a spirit can, anyways—behind him, smiling at him softly in amusement. Blaise placed his fork back on the table, turning around to face her fully.

"So, you're the new students," she started as Blaise opened his mouth to introduce himself. He flushed slightly and clamped his jaws shut, feeling them work in irritation at being cut off. Patil and Turpin giggled and he grimaced. Instead of snapping at them, though, he forced a smile to his face and inclined his head in something of a bow.

"Blaise Zabini." He offered, not one to be impolite. And to be shown up by a ghost, no less! Unbelievable.

"I think you already know who I am, but for the sake of manners I shall introduce myself. I am the Grey Lady, the ghost of Ravenclaw House. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Blaise Zabini." Damien snorted next to him.

"Will you two stop flirting with each other? I'm trying to eat over here." Blaise turned to him, intent upon reprimanding the Dark Heir for his manners, before a soft laugh make him pause.

"Oh, I like you," The Grey Lady proclaimed, now beaming her smile upon Damien. "And you are?"

Damien didn't look up from his plate. "Damien Morgan." The Grey Lady nodded to him in acknowledgement before excusing herself, floating off to talk to a few of the older students. Blaise returned to his food, noting in disappointment that it had gone slightly cold in his distraction. He shrugged and picked up his fork again, shoving the first bite of beef into his mouth. Patil made a face at him and Damien laughed when Blaise began to choke.

Dinner went on, and dessert came and went before the Headmaster stood again, the plates wiped clean of all traces of food.

"Ahem—just a few more words now that we are all fed and watered. I have a few start-of-term notices to give you. First years should note that the forest on the grounds is forbidden to all pupils. And a few of our older students would do well to remember that as well." Damien sniggered as Dumbledore's eyes landed on the red-haired twins seated at the Gryffindor table. Blaise shot him a bemused look but he waved it away, silently telling him they'd talk about it later. "Quidditch tryouts will be held in the second week of the term. Anyone interested in playing for their house teams should contact Madam Hooch. And finally, I must tell you that this year, the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side is out of bounds to everyone who does not wish to die a very painful death."

Damien and Blaise both looked at each other and burst out laughing, much to the bewilderment of those around them. Dumbledore looked at them, his eyes twinkling.

"And now, before we go to bed, let us sing the school song!" The other teacher's smiles faltered at that, and it seemed to take some effort on their part to keep them up. The Headmaster flicked his wand and a long gold ribbon appeared, twisting itself to form the lyrics.

"Everyone pick their favorite tune, and off we go!"

All around them students began to chant, some managing to stay in key, others screeching hideously. Damien and Blaise looked at each other incredulously, both sealing their lips and refusing to make a sound, let alone sing.

The Weasley twins (for what else could they be?) were the last to finish, a slow funeral march echoing around the hollowed chamber as they reached the last few lines. Dumbledore conducted them enthusiastically, wiping at his eyes when they finished.

"Ah, music; a magic beyond all we do here! And now, bedtime. Off you trot!"

The scraping of chairs filled the Hall as the students stood, older students with badges that Blaise took to be the Prefects gesturing for the first years to follow them. They filed after the young man, pacing down twisting corridors and up rotating staircases, past whispering portraits. Blaise grimaced as Turpin bumped into him. He hated closed spaces.

"Here we are," announced a voice some distance ahead of them, and the two pushed their way to the front, ignoring the cries of indignation that followed them in their wake. By the time they reached the front the Prefect had already given the password ("Merlin") and the portrait hole had swung open, allowing them entry.

Inside was a collage of bronze and blue. Dark indigo draperies shadowed the windows and burnished bookshelves lined the walls, the tomes carefully arranged within lovingly cared for. A fire roared in the hearth, casting dimness over the bronze and navy armchairs and couches placed around the chamber. The Prefect strode in, not giving his surroundings a glance, and motioned to the two staircases winding out of sight.

"Girls to your left, boys to your right." Damien looked at Blaise and shrugged, stepping forward first and leading the way up the flight of steps. At each landing was a door with a plaque announcing the years to which each room belonged. The seventh years came first, then the sixth, the fifth, the fourth—

Finally they reached the first year landing, at the very top of the tower, and Damien pushed the door open noiselessly. Seven beds fanned out in a semi circle around the edges of the room, navy drapes and bronze headrests looming out through the darkness. Damien stepped in and located his at the far reaches of the chamber; Blaise's just next to his. The two boys collapsed onto the soft feather mattresses as the other lads piled in, changing into their bedclothes as they conversed in hushed whispers. Damien turned onto his side and regarded Blaise through the half-darkness; somewhere between coming in and now someone had lit a lamp across the room.

"How'd your day turn out, Blaise?"

The dark skinned boy stared at Damien before sighing and standing, moving to change his clothes himself.

"It was…interesting."

**

* * *

A/N: Before you say anything, this chapter was meant to be short. This was mainly from a Blaise point of view, though I kept to the traditional third-person. I wasn't sure myself whether or not to put him in Slytherin, but I finally decided on Ravenclaw, if only because Damien shouldn't be alone. The other five Ravenclaw boys of their year are Michael Corner, Terry Boot, Stephen Cornfoot, Kevin Entwhistle and Anthony Goldstein. The Ravenclaw girls in their year are: Mandy Brocklehurst, Su Li, Morag McDougal, Padma Patil and Lisa Turpin.**

**ON another note, everyone in the Hall did hear the Hat almost proclaim him a Gryffindor, which is partly why Draco looked so betrayed. As many of you have guessed, Hermione wanted to be in Slytherin because Harry was thought to be going there; you saw how well that turned out. **

**For now, Damien will be Damien unless there is a flashback, like earlier when Blaise was remembering the day the Dark Lord fell from his point of view. Damien was still called Harry back then. I hope that doesn't confuse you. Hermione may or may not be dark in this story, though I'm tending more towards making her dark right now. The Sorting Hat kept Damien from Slytherin on purpose, though why won't be revealed yet, sorry. Is the Dark Lord disappointed in his son's House? No way to know…yet. :) **

**This year is going to be more fun to write than I had previously thought…**


	5. A Long Day Indeed

**A Change in History: The Philosopher's Stone**

_A HP Fanfiction_

Disclaimer: I do not own HP.

**Chapter Five: A Long Day Indeed**

* * *

The silence in the common room was deafening. Hermione glanced around, wondering how smart a move it would be if she simply bolted out the portrait hole. She turned around as discreetly as she could, contemplating the appeal of that idea, but a large boy with a pudding-bowl haircut shifted into place before her, cracking his knuckles threateningly. She slowly rotated on the spot to once again face her new Housemates, swallowing audibly. She cast a pleading look to Theo, but the boy only shook his head and retreated deeper into his corner. She refused the urge to spit in his direction. _Coward._

A voice, snidely hateful but undeniably thick with pleasure at her predicament drew her attention to the blond who stood facing her, flanked by a gaggle of Slytherins. "A _mudblood_ in Slytherin. What a disgrace. What did you do—promise the patch of filth a shot at you if he complied?" Crude, perverse sniggers echoed around the shadowy recesses of the vaulted chamber, bouncing off the stone walls and ringing in her ears. Her face flushed scarlet at the implication and anger flooded her veins, narrowed eyes focusing in on him. A voice in the back of her head was shouting at her to hold her tongue, but she ignored it. She drew herself up with as much icy dignity as she could muster.

"Better than you could do, you albino rat," she responded scathingly, her cinnamon eyes flashing dangerously as she planted her fists on her hips and stepped forward to drive home her point. "Try putting on some makeup, would you? You might not look like you're a walking corpse, though you'd look even less like a _real_ man than you do now." His face pinched and she felt a rush of satisfaction. She hit a sore point with him, it seemed.

"Take your own advice, you sniveling piece of waste. It's all I can do not to go blind when looking at you." Hermione bristled visibly, a cat-like hiss the only answer she gave. "And your teeth! No wonder they're so large; after all, muggles are incompetent." Hermione felt another flash of fury well within her as the Slytherins sniggered again. That retort stung her more than the others had; her parents were dentists, after all.

"My parents might not be magical," she said, in a voice of such controlled calm that it sounded strangled, "but at least they love me, which is more than your own parents can say about you, I bet."

The laughter stopped immediately as he regarded her with a mixture of surprise and outrage. He sputtered for a moment, obviously searching for a suitably cutting remark to the unexpected comeback before he sneered ominously and turned on his heel, stomping up the stairs to his dorm. The crowd that had gathered during their dispute gradually broke up, wandering off and throwing her mocking comments as they returned to their own tasks. It took her a moment of standing there alone in the center of the room, still defensive in posture and glaring at the boy's staircase, to realize that she had won. Hermione's shoulder slumped of their own accord and she let loose a great _whoosh_ of air in relief.

Now that the potential danger had passed Theo cautiously approached her, glancing nervously at his Housemates as if afraid they would run to Draco and tattle on him for doing so. He reached her side and flinched as she whirled to consider him coolly, struggling to keep the tears from flowing.

"Coward," she spat before he could open his mouth, crossing her arms and glowering for all she was worth at him. Theo had the good grace to look ashamed.

"I'm sorry," he muttered, "but you don't understand. I grew up with Draco, and he has such a temper…I don't want him to be mad at me; he's my best friend…"

She snorted angrily as tears burned the back of her eyes and throat more persistently, not accepting his excuse. A distressed whimper threatened her composure, and she reflexively pushed it back, causing her to hiccup slightly. Theo watched her with wide eyes, just now realizing how upset she was, but before he could offer any consolation she bid him a terse and insincere goodnight, half-stalking and half-fleeing up the stairs. She reached the landing that held her dorm, ignoring the echoing call for her to come back and slammed the door shut behind her, cutting off the sound abruptly, a sob escaping her lips despite her attempts to suppress it. Hermione flung herself onto her four-poster—nearest the door, by some twist of fate that she couldn't quite identify as lucky or unlucky—and pulled the pillow at the top of the spread to her in a death grip as the salty tears flooded over her cheeks. The soft material stuck to her face and she bit back another wail, shaking uncontrollably from the effort. That had just been the first trial; how many more hurdles would she have to jump before she could take no more? Hermione didn't bother fighting it this time as the sob shook her small frame even more violently. For the first time in a long time, Hermione allowed herself a good, hard cry.

* * *

The morning dawned bright and cool, a slight breeze wafting across the rolling hills of green that spanned the grounds. Damien's eyes twitched and scrunched as he felt the air play across his features. His eyelids peeled open slowly, gritty with sleep, and he sat up reluctantly from his warm sheets. A fist found its way to his face and rubbed at his eyes as he glared venom at the crack in the stone that had let the breeze in.

_Great,_ he thought sourly, _a drafty castle._

His bare feet found the floor and the coolness of the flagging helped to clear some of the grogginess from his brain. He sighed and pushed himself up, stretching, before moving towards the trunk at the foot of his bed and rummaging through it for fresh clothes.

He emerged from the bathroom a short time later, fully clothed and hair still damp from the shower. His dorm mates were just getting up and about, but curiously Blaise's bed was empty and perfectly made. Damien jumped as a voice floated to him, originating not but a few inches to his left.

"Are you done in there already? Others need to primp for the day too, you know." Damien shot Blaise a playful scowl and strode past him, head held high in a show of affronted pride. Damien clearly heard an amused snigger behind him before the sound of a door shutting firmly reached his ears. He sat down upon his unmade bed, pulling his favorite but rather worn and battered dragon hide boots out from under it. The others were still bent over their trunks, reaching in with a marked sluggishness to extract their uniforms. Damien snorted derisively as he pulled one boot on, reaching down for the other.

"Hey, is that dragon hide?" Damien's head snapped up, zoning in on the messy haired zombie who had addressed him so plainly. Apparently his scorn had attracted their attention.

He ignored their mindless gawking and finished with his chore, standing up as Blaise reentered the room, as immaculate in appearance as ever.

"Shall we?" He enquired, pointedly disregarding their offended squawks. Damien nodded shortly and slung his fully laden bag over one shoulder, already striding towards the door to exit the dorm.

Blaise followed him like a silent shadow down the long, twisting flight of steps to the common room, which was sparsely populated. The only students to look up as they passed were fifth years clustered in a small group and lounging about the unlit fireplace. Damien pushed the portrait hole open and stepped out to the side, paying no heed to the tired yawn that marked the presence of the half-asleep occupant of the painting that guarded the Ravenclaw Tower. He waited until he heard the tell-tale sound of the entrance sealing before taking off once more, Blaise hot on his heels.

Very few people were in the Great Hall, which both surprised Damien and didn't. Most of those who were present were seated at the Ravenclaw and Slytherin tables, though one Gryffindor—a flame-haired teenager who could only be a Weasley—sat primly at his table and digested his breakfast with the utmost of manners. Damien raised an eyebrow at that but didn't comment. There were a few Hufflepuffs, all of them older than he and discussing Quidditch tryouts with much enthusiasm. Damien paused in his stride and searched the Slytherin table with his eyes, not sure if he was disappointed or not when he noticed that neither Theo nor Draco was present. Hermione was, though. She was alone, as far from the other Slytherins as she could go while still being physically seated and playing with the food on her plate, a book cracked open and leaning against a milk jug on the table beside her. Damien motioned for Blaise to proceed to the Ravenclaw table and approached her, missing the speculative look Blaise shot him as he walked past. Hermione looked up when he stopped across the table from her. Her eyes were red rimmed and bloodshot, her face slightly splotchy as she regarded him silently. He had seen those symptoms before, quite a few times. Pansy was one to wail loudly and sniffle until she got what she wanted, but besides her Damien had seen no one else cry—other than him, of course. Could he even count the times he had sobbed, curled up in a corner of a cold and wet dungeon cell as he hoped for some form of comfort to come to him as a small child? Damien didn't even realize he was frowning until Hermione addressed him.

"What's wrong, Damien?" He jerked slightly as her concerned voice broke into his somber reverie. He gestured over his shoulder to where Blaise sat, watching them both with an intense curiosity marring his face.

"You looked alone," He elaborated. "Want to eat with us?"

It was her turn to frown, apparently. She looked back down to her plate, food untouched but thoroughly mangled, to the deserted benches around her, to the Ravenclaw table where Blaise was already happily digging into his food, then back to Damien.

Her reply was hesitant but hopeful. "Sure."

Damien helped her move her belongings over to the Ravenclaw table, ignoring the odd looks he earned from most of his fellow students and faculty members, and sat down to serve himself bacon and eggs. Blaise looked up as Hermione picked a seat next to Damien, settling her book against the nearest available surface and pulling a serving bowl of hot porridge towards her.

"Company at breakfast? Had I known I would have worn my suit." Hermione grimaced at him good-naturedly, temporarily forgetting her morose mood as the two began to tease her in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere. Blaise leaned forward as the group grew quiet again, squinting his eyes at the half-hidden cover of her volume.

"'_The Dark Arts Outsmarted'_? Why would you be reading that?" Damien glanced up from his meal, dissecting her expression closely as she looked up from her reading.

"Oh, this? Just a bit of light reading." Blaise shot a disbelieving look at the size and obvious weight of the tome before shaking his head.

"If you say so, Princess." He spooned some of his own porridge into his mouth, conveniently missing the embarrassed blush that spread across her pale face. Damien snickered quietly.

"Oh, hush, you," she reprimanded crossly, smacking him lightly on the arm. It only made him laugh harder. She smiled slightly despite herself, turning her head back to continue her reading and allowing her hair to cascade down and cover her face to hide her amused expression.

Breakfast passed quietly after that, the occasional spark of conversation igniting when one of the three hit upon an interesting choice of topic. During this time the Hall grew steadily more crowded, and thus steadily louder. It wasn't long before a short man with shocks of hair framing his otherwise bald head came around, handing out what must have been schedules. Damien looked around as he approached.

"Here are your timetables," he told them, handing both Blaise and Damien theirs. He turned to Hermione, smiling mischievously. "You aren't one of my students, but since Severus didn't seem keen on coming all this way to give you yours I volunteered to do it for him." With that he relinquished her schedule and left, traveling down the length of the table to talk to a few of the older students. Damien raised an eyebrow at his departure, and Hermione had the good grace to be discomfited. She perused it before leaning over to inspect Damien's. Her face fell slightly.

"We only have Charms together," she mumbled, falling back into her seat with a depressed air. Blaise and Damien exchanged raised eyebrows.

"Oh cheer up," Blaise said at last, resuming his steady consumption of the food on his plate, "at least we have that together. We could have no classes together at all."

Hermione shrugged, poking at the scrambled eggs she had just spooned up for herself. "I suppose."

Damien sighed. This was going to be a long day.

* * *

Herbology was first. Damien and Blaise trooped down the shimmering, sloping lawns of the castle in the faint heat, headed directly for the greenhouses. There the rest of the class waited, congregated outside of a closed glass door. Padma and her friend—he believed her name was Lisa—waited near the fringes of the crowd and they turned when the boys approached.

"There you are," Padma began, business-like. "We were beginning to wonder. You two must have taken your sweet time eating." She turned back around, satisfied with her quick lecture, and Blaise made a rude gesture at her back that caused Damien to suppress a snort.

"We'll have none of that, thank you." The two jumped and a silly laugh floated through the air. Most of the class turned around to watch. A short, plump woman with graying hair tucked up into a gardening hat passed the two, smiling enthusiastically at the group crowded around her…classroom…door. "Is everyone here? Good. Don't want anyone to miss this class, now, do we?" A few of the students smiled at her tentatively, but Damien and Blaise swapped exasperated looks. Why did it have to be a bubbly teacher?

And bubbly she was. Throughout the class she giggled and made small, not quite funny jokes, but many of the students laughed anyways out of politeness. Damien had never been a plant-and-flower type, but this just made it worse. He wanted out of here, and he wanted out now.

Blaise smirked at him in amusement as he tugged on one of the pairs of gardening gloves resting on the table before them; they had paired up, naturally. "What's the matter? Scared of a few plants, Damien?" The Dark Heir scowled at him and pulled on his own gloves, facing the pot before him with determination. Pulling weeds couldn't possibly be that hard.

Damien exited the greenhouse an hour later, a little warm around the collar from the magnified sunlight and covered in dirt. Blaise followed him, laughing outright, and the two girls trailed after him still confused.

"I don't understand how it could have happened," Lisa was babbling, Padma nodding her agreement. Damien clenched his teeth.

"I don't either. How can you upset the table while pulling weeds?"

"And in the process knock a lot of sharp gardening tools over and onto the Professor's foot?"

Blaise was laughing harder now, doubling over and clutching his sides as they made the return trip to the castle. It took all of Damien's will power not to wandlessly silence them all. They wouldn't even know what hit them.

"It doesn't make sense. And sweet little Professor Sprout was so mad! I thought for sure she was going to hit him with that rake."

"So did I."

That's it. Damien was officially done with this gardening crap; next time he'd skip the class altogether. Blaise's laughter faded soon, and the girls stopped discussing the incident, but it still burned at him. How could the Dark Heir be bested by _weeds_? It was inconceivable. He tried to run his hand through his hair and failed, due to the fact that it was heavily clumped with mud and dirt. Damien scowled and viciously tugged at the matted locks, to no avail. Yes, it was official, now, no doubt: Herbology was the subject he hated most.

Blaise snickered again, a remnant of his prior hilarity, and Damien narrowed his eyes over his shoulder at the greenhouse that was growing smaller and smaller in the distance.

Oh, yes. He _hated_ Herbology.

**

* * *

A/N: Wow…I'm actually managing to keep to my once-a-week routine, and I got it in early! Sweet. Anyways, as I said before, Hermione would probably be dark in this story…Well, now I will confirm it. She -will- be dark. How? You'll find out, though this chapter may give some indication.**

**As for Blaise being a good friend, just look at him! You'll notice just how much more relaxed around Damien he is than around Theo and Draco. That's because he trusts Damien so much more. Also, Theo, Blaise and Damien are trying to be nice to Hermione for several reasons, one of which is that Damien realizes she would possibly make a very good ally if they secure her allegiance. Draco's not going to help with that, though. Think of him as the conflicting variable in the equation. The quartet still lives, however! I agree with Schokki, though; if ever Hermione was to become friends with Draco a good punch would certainly help his attitude. Hermione's partially cunning, though she still has very strong streaks of Gryffindor in her that Damien will have to start working to get rid of. She'll get less bold and more subtle as the series wears on (from the influence of both the Slytherins and Damien), but for right now I'm trying to stay true to her canon nature while attempting to put her in a different light. After all, she's in Slytherin here. She'll have to fight tooth and nail just to survive. But whoever said Hermione wasn't a survivor, if nothing else? She won't hate 'mudbloods' but she's not very fond of the Muggles she knew back home either, which will be an advantage to Damien.**

**I'll continue to switch between many different POVs as this story moves on. I feel as though the story wouldn't be as concrete or complete without doing so, without the many different perspectives, and seeing from Blaise's, Theo's and Hermione's point of view will really help later plot twists (what they are I will not say:P)**

**And no, this isn't H/HG, which many of you are grateful for but I was never planning and hadn't even considered until someone asked.**

**-Sigh- and once again I must say: Damien will -not- be going light in this story. Ever. He's so much more fun to write Dark, anyways.**

**Well, I suppose that's it for now. Au revoir, and don't forget to review: I need to answer your questions now or else I might forget to later, and that wouldn't help the plot at all.**


	6. Day of Deeds

**A Change in History: The Philosopher's Stone**

_A HP Fanfiction_

Disclaimer: I do not own HP.

**Chapter Six: Day of Deeds**

* * *

To say that Damien was surprised by his next class would be an understatement. A _big_ understatement.

Blaise and Damien had returned to Ravenclaw Tower to fetch the appropriate books for their next class—Transfiguration—and had enjoyed a relaxing sojourn in the library (which they knew the location of due to the thoughtful assistance of the upperclassmen in their House) before the bell rang for the day to continue. Damien and Blaise—being the first years that they are, albeit incredibly intelligent first years—only got lost five times on the way to Transfiguration, which, according to the Grey Lady (who seemed to have a penchant for Blaise, how Damien couldn't imagine) was almost unheard of for a newcomer; apparently it moved around a lot and was never in the same place. Damien let loose a few choice curses in between gulps of air as the two boys shot down the first floor corridor, jumping as high as they could manage in order to stare through the glass windows in the doors as they flashed by. As they passed near one of those doors it opened, and a very shocked and frightened Quirrell toppled back into his classroom to gales of laughter, shrieking something about a vampire as they inadvertently knocked him over. Damien shouted a hurried apology over his shoulder and Blaise let out a few swear words of his own.

"Where…in the name…of Merlin is…this…class?" He panted, hardly able to fit the words out of his mouth. Damien shook his head, too winded to answer properly as he peered into another classroom. His eyes lit up.

"Here!" Blaise—who had passed him in his rush—backtracked and heaved an unusually large sigh of relief.

"Someone ought to sue this school for harassing the students," he muttered, still breathing heavily. Damien reached for the handle.

A scowl of disapproval met them the moment the door swung open. Professor McGonagall surveyed them crossly over the rim of the glasses perched primly on her thin nose, eyeing their harried appearance as she paused in her introductory speech. Their fellow first year Ravenclaws looked away from her, some sniggering at their misfortune. Padma and Lisa sat near the back, the former scowling as furiously as the professor and the other taking the moment to doodle something on the table.

"Late on the first day?" She huffed. "I suppose I can't blame you. Hurry up, take your seats. We must get started immediately." Damien had the good grace to flush in embarrassment as he moved back to join Padma at the rear (the only seats left in the whole class next to her, and Damien couldn't help but sarcastically wonder why), Blaise tailing him. Oh, the students' laughing didn't bother him; it was the look the professor gave him. It was so eerily reminiscent something his father would do—minus the potentially painful 'corrections' and dressing-downs from Nagini for being overdue—that it made him alternatively shiver and choke up. He sat next to Padma—alright, more like flopped down, who cares if it's undignified?—and set his bag on the floor beside him, growing broodingly silent as Blaise pulled out a chair to his right.

Professor McGonagall sniffed in slight annoyance as Blaise took his seat and turned back to the class at large, pulling their attention and their wandering eyes back to her with sharp, skillful ease.

"As I was saying, Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn here at Hogwarts. Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."

_Well_, Damien thought as she turned to the blackboard to begin the lesson, _at least I was right about one thing. She's so like father it's frightening._ His father, however, would have put things a little differently. In Father's eyes, 'leaving and not coming back' meant a one-way ticket to the afterlife via a burst of green light with the occasional terrified screaming. He doubted, though not as much as he was shocked to realize, that the professor would mean the same.

* * *

Professor McGonagall spent the next quarter of an hour introducing them to the basics of Transfiguration; the steps one must take when turning something not alive into something sentient; how one must be sure to give the thing its own mind, in order for it to work and live and exist as its newly acquired form and nature dictated. Padma was taking down notes fastidiously, as was the majority of his classmates, but Damien simply leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling in boredom. He had covered this when he was newly seven; t'was something he could probably recite in a state of drugged sleep. His attention was drawn back to the class only when the stern professor transfigured her desk into a pig and back again, eliciting ooohs and aaahs in great quantities. Damien forced down a derisive snort. He could do that when he was almost eight; it wasn't that difficult. He must have made some sound that voiced his opinion, though, for Padma spun around in her seat so quickly that Damien was hard pressed to believe she hadn't warped her spine in some way. She graced him with a condescending frown (nothing on ole Severus or Father, surely, but more than likely a force in its own right among her peers) before she returned to her note taking. Blaise stuck his tongue out at her haughty profile for his benefit and Damien tittered.

"Do you find something entertaining in the idea of turning a person into a tiger against their will and being consequently cannibalized, gentlemen?" Half the class had turned around in their seats to glare just as balefully as Padma had. Damien stopped his sniggering and masked his amusement with a pitch-perfect poker face.

"No ma'am. Just something Padma did." Padma's head snapped up from its bent position and she paled under the Professor's hard, disapproving gaze. Damien cracked an imperious grin out of the corner of his mouth. This was most enjoyable.

Professor McGonagall, at last finished with her long and drawn-out monologue gave each individual a match that they were required to transfigure into a needle. Padma stared at her match as she received it, almost as if she believed the might of her gaze would turn the end pointy and the slim body silver. Damien disregarded the solitary and focused attention the rest of the class (save Blaise, naturally) was dispensing upon their task and turned to his own, taking the wand from its holster at his wrist almost as an afterthought. He frowned at it thoughtfully. He had never attempted magic with such a handicap; surely it wasn't that difficult, though. Damien vaguely recalled something he had read in a Charms book once about 'swish and flick'. Did the same strategy apply to Transfiguration? He was about to find out.

* * *

It was a ghastly amount of time later, and Damien had still not quite grasped the concept of attempting to channel his magic—something that was as natural to him as closing his eyes or breathing or eating or drinking or sleeping or living—and forcing it through the end of this meager length of wood, waving it about like a club wielded by a drunk ogre on a mountain slope in an attempted to do such _simple magic!_

He snarled under his breath, a foul curse—he had learned it from Uncle Stan when he was seven—that would have made Nagini box him about the ears with her powerful tail balancing on the tip of his tongue. He glanced around, furtively; so far no one had managed it, even so close to the end of the class, though Blaise's had become sharp on one end and was beginning to shine in the light around the edges. Damien hissed in annoyance and glared down at his match; perfectly unmoved and unchanged from where it had first been placed before him.

_Surely she won't know the difference,_ he thought to himself quietly, watching the Professor out of the corner of his eye. She was lounging on her desk in a puddle of morning light guised as a tabby cat, seemingly asleep for all that her furry, lithe little body rose and fell steadily, tail swishing languidly across the desktop and knocking the occasional paper onto the floor, lamplight eyes closed. He bit his lip and, ensuring no one was looking, quickly and efficiently transferred his wand to his left hand and waved his right over the match. Immediately it changed, taking the form he wished for with no show of hesitation or amateur apprehension. Padma turned away from her own frustrated attempts at Transfiguration at the small noise of triumph he gave, and she gaped at his achievement.

"How did you do that?" She hissed, watching the Professor to make certain she hadn't seen Damien accomplish the task before her. Damien bestowed her with an indolent grin.

"Magic."

* * *

Lunch was a solemn affair, as much as it can be when one is in the presence of students ranging from pre-puberty to early adulthood, some hyped up on their recent successes in class (and sweets someone had smuggled into school and was peddling in the hallways for a Sickle a piece) while others were drowning their sorrows and failures in obscene amounts of turkey, bread crumbs and pumpkin juice. Damien found quickly that he could not bring himself to associate with either, poking at the green bean casserole on his golden plate as those around him laughed and debated and moaned over the unfairness of homework on the first day around the wads of blowing gum and lunch in their mouths (a rather disgusting combination, but interesting to see nonetheless). Blaise sat next to him, customary and secure in his position as Damien's right, spooning himself up some gravy for his mashed potatoes.

"The look on Padma's face," he exclaimed for what must have been the millionth time since the end of Transfiguration ten minutes and much pushing through the crowds around the candy peddler on their way to the Great Hall later, "I swear I thought she was going to poke your eyes out with her wand, short lethal thing that it is. She was mad as _fire_. What did you say to her?"

Damien looked past him down the table, to where Lisa and Padma sat among a few fifth year girls and a second year of Asian origin whose name Damien did not know. Padma looked up as she sensed his gaze and conferred unto him a livid glare that would have done Diablo proud before turning back to her conversation, nose in the air.

"Nothing…just that it was magic." Blaise cackled into his pumpkin juice and his eyes bugged for a moment as it went down the wrong hole. Damien thumped him on the back helpfully.

"Hah! What a thing to say to a Ravenclaw. I'm surprised she didn't tear your ears off."

"Pardon? I'm perfectly within my rights. I'm a Ravenclaw too, if you've forgotten."

Blaise offered him a queer look. "Sometimes I wonder." He muttered, eyes slowly drifting to the Slytherin table, where Damien knew Draco was attempting to burn acid holes into his back. "You really should talk to him soon, you know," Blaise continued obliquely, finishing off his mashed potatoes with a great bite that caused a third year girl across from them to make a face and move away, "before he does something stupid like he always does. Think he's gotten in on Granger yet?" He forked a few slices of roasted honey-glazed ham onto his plate, lathering that with a healthy helping of gravy, too.

Damien recalled Hermione's puffy, red rimmed eyes that morning. He hoped not. What use would she be then? He didn't deign to answer his companion's inquiry, choosing instead to pop a spoonful of green beans and crunchy things he didn't know the name of into his mouth. He chewed for a few moments, moving the food around in his jaws before he swallowed. "What's next on the agenda, o brother of mine?"

Blaise didn't even bother to reach for his timetable; he had spent some time at the end of their last class memorizing their schedule, giving up on his half-metal match with a huff. "A thirty minute break—we could probably go up the library again, Hades knows we didn't get enough time in there last time—then we have Defense Against the Dark Arts with the 'Puffs."

Quirrell the Squirrel—as Damien had heard a few disdainful Slytherin sixth years name him as he passed them by on his way to the Great Hall for lunch, due to the professor's nervous and twitchy demeanor—with the brainless halfwits who couldn't get into any other House. Great.

* * *

He didn't have anything against the Hufflepuffs personally, he reiterated to himself for the thousandth time as he filed in with his Housemates after their break; DADA was starting, and the professor was nowhere to be found. They just…well…weren't very _smart_, and if there's one thing Damien can't stand its idiots, followed closely by fools. Hufflepuff House seemed to be rife with both of them, and all immature to boot; one of the boys was chewing what could have only been Drooble's Best Blowing Gum and sticking the saliva-covered wad down one of his female Housemate's shirt; she screeched and hopped around the room to hoots of laughter, scratching at her back as bluebell bubbles rose up into the air and filled the room with a fruity fragrance. To the Dark Heir's annoyance and dismay, the girl sniffled and began to sob loudly, every hiccup causing another bubble to rise into the air until one couldn't move without bumping into them. Blaise chuckled as Damien groaned. Could it get much worse?

* * *

It just couldn't get much worse than this; it just couldn't. There was no feasible, _human way it could_.

But of course, Hermione reflected as she walked down the halls to lunch, these people couldn't possibly be _human_. Not with the way they were treating her. A first year—Hermione's own House!—elbowed by her with a rude sneer, daring her to say something. Hermione glared but kept silent; sullenly staring at her feet as her Housemates quickly moved ahead of her as if afraid they were going to catch some disease by being within ten feet. Hermione sniffled but refused to cry. Why should she give these lowlifes the satisfaction of seeing her tears? She bet none of them had ever cried. They were all heartless.

Well, she thought, maybe not Theo. Sure, he was a coward, but he was the only one to even try to be nice to her. The rest were brats. But of course, Theo wasn't here with her now; he was up in the front, shadowing Malfoy—bloody I-own-everyone-and-everything-and-your-vermin-compared-to-me _Malfoy_, the miserable little git—like a frightened little baby.

_That's mean. _Part of her self chided her. _You can't say that about him._

What? About Malfoy? He's a git!

_No, you dunderhead. Theo! He's trying to be nice to you!_

Up ahead of her something had happened during her inattention, and suddenly the whole pack of snakes were roaring with mirth and sneaking glances at her out of the corners of their eyes. Malfoy was smirking like he was the king of the world—he probably thought he was, too, irritating little—and Theo shuffled along with his head down, not looking at her, though his cheeks were beet red. She felt her own face heat up. She could figure out what they were saying; she didn't even have to read lips. '_Quite a talent,_' she thought to herself snidely.

Nice, huh? You call that 'nice'?

_It's the thought that counts._

Huh. Deciding not to point out the irony in her inner voice saying that, she walked on, bringing her chin up to bear and staring ahead, refusing to acknowledge the jeers she was receiving from all sides. They may have taken everything else, but they wouldn't take her pride.

**

* * *

A/N: Hello, my wonderful readers. This chapter was going to be _so_ much longer (probably around ten pages instead of around four-five) but I wanted to get this up and out of the way to focus on my mid-terms. Ah mid-terms…My first in high school. (Sarcastic cheer.) Anyways, I'm probably going to start on the next chapter after I take my exams, which should be this weekend, so hope for another update by the weekend after this one. (Confusing? I know.) Anyways, I've worked out all the Houses' schedules for the first years, and I have the Slytherin and Ravenclaw schedule right here so I'll know when classes are. I've referenced it to the Gryffindor first year schedule from canon and made sure that the classes they have with the Slytherins and such are not interfered with. It was all very confusing at first, but I straightened it out.**

**This isn't going to be HP (or DBM, if you prefer, since DM is Draco (and ever notice they have the same initials now? Hey, parentheses in parentheses!)) and GW, so don't worry, though she will come in second year (duh). No, Blaise isn't like 'Hermione's Ron' because you'll see soon that he's only nice to her because he knows she'll be useful. He doesn't care about her for any other reason other than being a tool (yeah, nice friends, huh?). Blaise, Damien and Hermione aren't the new Golden Trio, either; they're best friends and master schemers and she's…a puppet. Not a nice way to put it, but true. Though I'm sure you'll _love_ the plot twists with her way later in the story. I start to smile demonically just thinking about it…**

**You're all concerned with Theo's lack of a backbone and are hoping he grows one soon, which makes me smile when I start to think what I have in store for him. Don't worry, he gets a backbone…But I can guarantee that _none_, and I mean _none_ of you will like it. I probably would hate it too if the idea wasn't so positively, deliciously _evil_. :)**

**I know that some of you are H/HG inclined and are disappointed (but not too upset, I hope) that this isn't H/HG. I'll tell you now, though (and those that don't like the pairing don't think I'm bending the plot for them, because I'm not, it was always planned) there _is_ a short scene with the two later in the story. Nothing too personal, but an interesting little 'get to know you' thing anyway. **

**A lot of you want to see some other characters now (Severus, Dumbledore, maybe Tom inside Quirrell's head (I might be joking about that last one, don't get your hopes up too high yet)), which is good; I'll be bringing them in a little later, so sit tight. **

**One of my reviewers wants a one-shot (based in the far, _very far _future) based on HG/DM. All I'm saying is, when this story is done, if I wanted to I could very much make it happen seeing as how the story ends (but only in the one-shot, mind you, and don't ask about that last part, you'll get confused, believe me). If you have any requests like that, or want to see anything in the outtakes, please, tell me! I can't write it if you don't send in requests. :P**

**Keep the death threats regarding Tom's possible second murder coming! It just makes me smile demonically when I read them and it really makes my day. :) (Is that foreshadowing? I think I hear the foreshadowing monster trying to raid the cookie jar of plot twists and spoilers…(bats him away with a fly swatter))**

**Wheeeee, back to the long A/Ns…Aren't you happy:P And one last, itty bitty thing…**

**Where have all my readers gone!? Over half of them are missing! I feel lonely now… no joke.**


	7. What Is Done

**A Change in History: The Philosopher's Stone**

_A HP Fanfiction_

Disclaimer: I do not own HP.

**Chapter Seven: What Is Done**

* * *

Damien had decided long before Professor Quirrell walked into the room that this class would be abysmal; utterly, undeniably _abysmal_. The Hufflepuffs had claimed the back of the room and his fellow Ravenclaws the front. The difference between the two hemispheres of the room was unfathomable; whereas the Hufflepuffs were chattering loudly and socializing to such an extreme that it made Damien sick just to _watch _them, the studious Ravens had taken their materials out of their bags and were already waiting for class to begin, quills temporarily dried of all ink and poised for scribbling over blank parchment. Damien shared a put-upon glance with Blaise and grabbed the only empty seats, which were in the front row on the left side of the room. Damien left his bag well alone, reclining back in his chair with an air of bored aloofness. He didn't react when the door to the chamber creaked open, or when the Hufflepuffs fell silent behind him. Blaise—who had pulled out his textbook, at the very least—elbowed Damien, but the Dark Heir still leaned back in his chair, feeling confident that the professor wouldn't comment. From what he heard the man was an utter incompetent. Damien would be the last to think he had anything to fear from such an unsatisfactory wizard!

The professor reached the front of the chamber, stopping and turning to regard them with a certain amount of nervousness. Damien tried to repress a contemptuous snort but he failed, and Quirrell turned with a sharpness Damien hadn't thought him capable of and scowled viciously at him.

Damien wasn't about to be intimidated. He glared back fiercely, ignoring the furious, scolding whispers Padma was spewing at him front across the room. And as Damien looked the professor square in the eye, he could have sworn they flashed _red…_

An almighty crash resonated around the classroom as Damien's chair legs slammed back upon the floor, the boy in question sitting up so straight you would have thought him a tree, wide-eyed with shock and disbelief. Quirrell gave him a peculiarly satisfied, almost _fatherly_ look and turned back to the class at large, not sparing him even a glance. Blaise leaned over in his seat, keeping a cautious eye on the professor as he surveyed Damien in concern with the other.

"You okay, mate?" Damien's eyes remained glued on the turbaned wizard, who was in the midst of explaining in drawn-out stutters the basics of his subject. His fingers tightened their grip on the edge of their table, but he didn't so much as flinch when they were punctured by the splinters that had worked up in his frenzy.

"Yeah," he responded at length, a distant echo of his voice that was barely audible and, of all things, strangely quaking. "I'm fine."

Blaise gave him a look that said quite plainly the boy didn't believe him but left it alone, grudgingly taking notes as Quirrell continued to give his faltering lecture.

He _had_ to be hallucinating, or else he was surely going mad. Stark raving mad, to be precise! For that one, tiny, _fleeting_ moment, Damien had thought he was looking at his father…

But he was imagining things. His father was dead, killed—nay, murdered, by the very headmaster of the school he now attended. He shook his head violently, pulling out parchment and quill to take notes. He didn't need them in any form of the meaning, but it kept his hands and mind occupied. He found himself continually sneaking looks at the professor's eyes, most likely hoping to catch his gaze, but Quirrell neither looked around at him nor changed eye color again.

* * *

Damien sighed deeply as the bell rang and the class began to file out, putting his illegible notes back into his bag. He stood and slung it over his shoulder but hesitated, his gaze and heart torn between the door and the desk where the DADA professor had just seated himself. At last Blaise snagged the sleeve of his robe and hauled him bodily out, but before the door closed in his face Damien caught Quirrell's eye one last time.

Maybe it was just his imagination, but he would've bet his life and magic that the professor looked miserable.

* * *

Damien was almost completely silent throughout the entirety of supper, poking the food on his plate but not taking a single bite. Blaise had just finished polishing off his second plate. He would've been on his third by now, but the Grey Lady had dropped by their spot at the Ravenclaw table a little while earlier and engaged him in a lengthy discussion on History of Magic. It had been their last class for the day, but Damien had drifted through it like a man lost at sea, constantly churned about by the heavy turmoil of his thoughts. Blaise gave the turkey and lettuce sandwiches on the table setting a longing look before pushing him plate away. Damien jerked his head up off his hand and regarded him with speechlessness.

"I've had enough of this," he grated crossly, leveling Damien with a look that made him distinctly uncomfortable. "You've been far too quiet. What's wrong with you?"

Damien stiffened as the core of his tumult was stated so frankly, an imperial veil settling about him in self-defense.

"There's nothing _wrong_ with me," He fairly spat the word, gracing Blaise with a steely stare. Blaise met him eye for eye, and for the longest time they were locked in an undetectable struggle for supremacy. At last Damien broke eye contact, heaving a great sigh of melancholy. Blaise's expression immediately turned from irate to concerned. "It's just…You remember what happened in Defense, don't you?"

Blaise scoffed. "How could I not?" He grumbled with a half-hearted humor, "I've _never_ seen you act like that. What happened? I didn't see anything."

This was what Damien was uncertain and cynical about. He toyed with the mangled remains of chicken on his plate before looking up again, casting an involuntary glance at the Head Table. Blaise followed the minute gesture and frowned.

"Does it have anything to do with Quirrell?" He questioned, seeming truly interested now. Damien nodded despondently. "So? It's not like he's anything compared to you. He spook you out or something? I admit, the turban in fairly disturbing…"

Damien ignored Blaise's attempt at cheering him up and took a deep breath. "Well, when we staring each other down—"

"Oh yeah, I remember that."

"His eyes, they…" Damien paused here, truly apprehensive to voice his thoughts even to his best friend. "They went red for a moment."

Blaise went unnaturally silent, suddenly giving Damien such a sympathetic look that it made him turn away.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Damien demanded, unwilling to see that expression for even a moment more than he had to. Blaise shook his head sadly.

"Damien…I know you miss…_Him_…but you have to move on. You _should've_ moved on by now! Seeing him everywhere isn't going to help you."

Damien exploded, standing from his chair so suddenly the table rattled and the Hall grew silent, turning to watch the debacle in unabashed curiosity.

"You think you know?! You think you _know_?! _You_ aren't the one who has nightmares about it _every waking night of your life_! _You_ aren't the one who lost the only parent you ever had!!!" Damien glared savagely at Blaise as the other boy shrank away from his mad tirade, gazing guiltily at the floor. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Dumbledore speak quietly with the Charms professor and the little man hopped off his chair, making a beeline for him.

Damien didn't want this. He didn't want the _pity_; pity had always been more than he could bear. Instead he stormed as swiftly as he could manage from the Great Hall, moving with the alacrity of an enraged god through the corridors of the deserted school towards his common room. He reached and screeched the password at the startled portrait, not even bothering to apologize as he slammed it shut behind him.

* * *

His goal was his dorm and he reached it, the many stairs doing nothing to aid in relieving his towering temper. Instead he threw himself upon his bed and beat the stuffing of it with a vengeance, not stopping until his limbs grew heavy. Only then did he cease his wrath, breathing heavily in the oppressive silence for a moment until he heard the tell-tale creaking of the staircase a floor beneath him. He leapt from his mattress at the noise and hastily erected a ward against intruders, his panic and raw torrent of emotions making it far stronger than he had ever intended it to be. The creaking stopped outside his door and a flabbergasted squeak issued from behind the wood and grew silent, presumably the stunned professor examining his admittedly remarkable handiwork.

Damien ignored him, lying once again on his bed and glaring at the ceiling. It was some time later that the creaking announced Flitwick's reluctant departure, even that sound growing faint and distant as he moved farther away. Soon there was nothing but silence, and in the silence Damien could think.

And for once in his entire life, he fervently wished not to think. This time, the subject of his thoughts was far too agonizing too dwell upon.

It was a long time until he heard anything, but when he did it was a tentative knock at the door.

"Damien? Damien…please open up." Damien stayed still as Blaise's voice drifted to him through the wood. A sigh. "Damien…" A truly uncertain pause, before the timid voice again. "Harry, please."

After a moment of thought Damien flicked his wrist, causing the ward to fall. A heartbeat of silence passed before the door soundlessly opened, admitting Blaise to the darkness of the room. Damien couldn't see the other boy through the curtains, but he knew when Blaise approached his four-poster when the sound of his bag being dropped atop his trunk reached his ears. Blaise stopped moving for a moment, hesitating over something, it appeared, before he went to his own bed.

"Goodnight, Harry," came the quiet, sad voice of his best friend. "I pray you sleep well. I think you need it more than anyone else can even imagine."

* * *

Through the eyes of his rather inadequate puppet Tom watched his Heir storm out of the Great Hall, so consumed with his sudden and inexplicable ire that he forgot his bag in his wake. Flitwick—the trying little imp that he was, however intelligent—hounded after him like an Auror on the scent of one of his not-so-loyal followers.

In the back of the wretch's mind Tom scowled venomously, silently chiding Harry for forgetting control. Even thinking about what would happen if the boy loosed command of his magic was enough to make even his skin crawl—if he _had_ any.

Blast it all! It was only the first day in this heinous prison others called Hogwarts, and already problems he had no hope of taming in his present state of existence were stirring the air like some filthy muggle's electricity.

And the boy's earlier impudence still astounded him. Only a year had he been gone, and already the boy was challenging authority—and right under that fool Dumbledore's too long nose! If it were at all possible Tom would have seized his Heir by his robes and shaken him until the child couldn't think straight.

But there was nothing he could do, and it was the most infuriating thing imaginable. For now he would simply have to sit back and let things take course—with the occasional interruption to place his marionettes back on the right track, of course. He trusted none of the fools to complete their mission without constant surveillance. It was greatly problematic, but he had no choice in the matter. He would just have to trust his son to the dubious charge of his wayward Potions Master.

Instinctively, the Dark Lord knew that nothing was going to go as planned.

**

* * *

A/N: Dear sweet Merlin above, this chapter was so awkward! I wrote the parts with Damien while listening to Sarah McLachlan's "Fallen" which I think greatly influenced the mood. I had originally planned for this to be way longer and almost nothing like this, but I'm just incapable of writing more at the moment. My mind goes positively _blank_ after this. I figure, though, that the little bit with Tom at the end should make you feel better. It felt good to write him again. I hadn't realized how much I missed it, to be honest. (Sweatdrops.) I'm just in a bit of a writing slump right now, so forgive me for this chapter not being that good.**

**Suggestion: If you ever get the time, re-read this chapter while listening to the "Fallen" song. It's actually sort of creepy.**

**Well, I don't really have anything to add, except that I enjoyed my Christmas. I hope you all enjoyed yours as well (if you celebrate it, that is, and if not, then Happy Early New Years).**


	8. Midnight Musings

**A Change in History: The Philosopher's Stone**

_A HP Fanfiction_

Disclaimer: I do not own HP.

**Chapter Eight: Midnight Musings **

* * *

It was midnight. The fire crackled merrily in the hearth, shadows dancing across the walls. Flames reflected in the polished wood of his desk, and the lone old man slumped in the armchair behind it watched the likeness with dull blue eyes. Upon the desk by his withered, wrinkled hand a teacup rested, the thin brown liquid inside cool after many hours of neglect. The old man sat there motionlessly for a long time, only the sliver of the moon peeking in through the windows nearby indicating the passing hours. It was only when the grate of the fireplace exploded with emerald did he look up, the slightest twinkling returning to his tired gaze.

The fire roared for a few moments, but all too soon the flames died down again, the light in the chamber dropping to naught but the dimmest glows once more. A man, one that could easily be classified as old and ancient as the one that sat behind the desk, stepped out of the dying flames without pause, stopping only when he was a sparse inch from the oaken surface that separated the two men. The one behind the desk smiled.

"Ah, Elwin. It's good to see you again." He waved a long, thin piece of wood and a chintzy purple armchair appeared out of nowhere, conveniently positioned within easy reach of the new arrival. The stranger did not sit; not yet.

"Albus. Thirteen inches, oak with phoenix feather, if I recall. It is equally good to see you, though I must admit that you seem to be faring far worse than what I could see from your firecall last night." The new man's voice was only slightly cracked with old age, the barest inflections of recent stress shining through. He finally sat, having removed his cloak from his shoulders and draping it across the back of his seat. The old man behind the desk chuckled.

"Same as always I see. I would offer you tea, old friend, but as you can see I have none readily to give." He waved a thin, wasted hand towards the teacup in question, and the stranger followed the motion with his eerie, moon-like eyes for only a few moments before returning his attention to his companion.

"I'm sure you know by now what occurred in my shop but days ago. You See almost as much as I, though sometimes I wonder just how much you really do…" The stranger trailed off, folding his own hands, just as thin as the other's, neatly in his lap.

"It is not the question of what I See, Elwin. You are well aware of that."

The stranger, Elwin, was quiet, his eyes traveling seemingly of their own accord around the shadowy recesses of the chamber. His large, odd eyes visibly softened as they fell upon the slumbering phoenix in the corner.

"Fawkes is doing well, though if I remember correctly he is approaching his Burning Day. Perhaps it would be best if you settled him in?"

Albus turned to his familiar and seemed to be contemplating that line of thought before he shook his head, the tall, pointed night cap perched atop it swaying dangerously.

"I will see to it in time. Now, however, is not the moment for idle banter. You are well aware of the circumstances surrounding the war and of our recent arrivals, correct?" Elwin nodded, knowing vocal affirmation was completely unnecessary in this situation. "My emissaries have informed me that there was a small group of boys entering your shop the other day. If my information is correct, then am I right to assume that one of them was young Mr. Potter?"

Elwin nodded. "Despite the circumstances of our situation, I was almost surprised to find that he did not, in fact, receive the wand that had been intended for him." His face grew troubled, a very rare sight indeed for any who knew the man even slightly. "I also wonder at the company he keeps. You are sure he is the one, Albus?" The curt inquiry was directed at the Headmaster, and the other wizard could only nod, his cap tipping precariously at the motion.

"Not only that, but it seems he has not gone into the House that we had suspected he would. A Ravenclaw? I must admit, the boy is certainly bright enough, but the fact that he did not end up in his…father's…House worries me."

Elwin raised a thin eyebrow at that. "Why? I would think you would be more worried about him discovering the secret operation your Defense professor is currently attempting to pull off. Are you not intending for him to find out?"

Albus frowned, his half-moon spectacles falling down the crooked bridge of his nose. "No," he said at length, the twinkling slowly dissipating from his gaze, "it is best he does not know his father is still alive. It is also best that Severus does not come into direct contact with the child." Albus sluggishly turned his head to look out the windows. It was still dark outside, but the barest hints of morning light had begun to gleam over the horizon. "Perhaps it is best this way. Chris will surely inherent the proper wand when he comes of age. It saddens me to have to pit two brothers against one another, but in this day and age even such disastrous occurrences must be borne if we are to succeed." Albus rose, and Elwin followed his example. "I am deeply glad you decided to stop by, Elwin. Will you keep me up to date on the comings and goings of your customers, specifically the older ones?" Elwin did not give him an answer; he simple clasped Albus' hand for the briefest moment before sweeping off to the fireplace, throwing a handful of powder he had extracted from his robes into the fire.

"Ollivanders, Diagon Alley!"

Albus leaned back in his armchair as his old friend was whisked away in a sea of flames, the exhaustion returning to settle heavily upon his features. Despite the late hour and his growing, demanding need for rest, Albus opened the drawer in his desk and retrieved a quill and ink. He had abandoned his earlier chore of writing up a letter to another old friend, but this time he knew he could not put it off any longer.

The old man bent his head resignedly over the wooden surface, but if he had looked up in that instant he would have seen something fleeing into the forest, a bare flicker of movements on the moon-soaked lawns of the castle.

**

* * *

A/N: Before you say anything, this was intentionally very short. This was supposed to be all Albus and (if you couldn't guess) Ollivander, and there's only so much one can write about one moment in time before things get redundant.**

**I gave Ollivander the first name of Elwin, not only because we were never given a first name for him, but because of the meaning behind it. You can look it up if you want; his name is a hint at something later in the story and I don't want to give it away that easily.**

**Anyways, raise your hand if you thought Dumbles had no idea what was going on before this chapter! (Knows that at least one person had no clue.) One of the major issues I knew I would have with this segment of the story was revealing how much he knew and when. I mulled over it for a while, and I have decided that it would be best for you all to know sooner than later, else you might be more confused than you may be already. There are so many hints at what he already knew, and if you go and look back at previous chapters in your spare time you might realize just how much is hidden in there.**

**I was going to make this chapter longer and put in some real plot to the Slytherins, but since I got a new computer I had to transfer all my files over to this new one, and I lost my Slytherin class schedule along the way, so I couldn't write up Draco's, Theo's and Hermione's first day of school—yet. I hope to get up another chapter soon (once I rewrite and/or find the schedule!) that follows them around on their first day. And not only that, but my _entire_ folder of Philosopher's Stone chapters was deleted, so now I have to type them all back up. Grr!**

**By the way, for those of you interested, the Draco/Damien confrontation is coming up with all due speed (they have Charms together first thing on the second day of school, wheee, so it should be the chapter after the next one) so hold onto your pointy wizarding hats for that.**

**As always, drop off questions if you want to ask them and I'll PM you about it.**


	9. Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

**A Change in History: The Philosopher's Stone**

_A HP Fanfiction_

Disclaimer: I do not own HP.

**Chapter Nine: Let Sleeping Dogs Lie**

* * *

She supposed her day was starting out well enough. Hermione padded quietly through the crowded hallways, pushing past people and murmuring apologies with every step. There were so many people! Her neighborhood back in the Muggle world was almost nothing like this; nobody took notice of anyone here, but back at home neighbors would always stop over for some tea and to catch up on the news.

Speaking of which…

Ahead Malfoy led the pack of first-year snakes through the hall, the group pushing past the throng of older students with ease. Hermione frowned at their lack of respect, the expression echoing on the upperclassmen that saw the act. Hermione was fairly certain that if Malfoy was absent the pack would be scurrying about through the shadows, stepping out of the way of other students like the Hufflepuff first years were.

The bushy-haired brunette snorted softly, precipitately burying her face within her books as that pug-faced girl sneered back at her, veritably glued to the albino brat's sleeve. Hermione blanched as Parkinson mooned over Malfoy so blatantly, and had to hold her breath for a moment to suppress the rising bile. How _anyone _could find something attractive about him was an utter mystery, and remained firmly beyond her. Beside Malfoy Theo walked along, and spared a brief moment to send her a sympathetic look.

Hermione brought her face back up out of her books, chin held strongly and head up confidently. Theo frowned at her, befuddled before Malfoy snagged him by the sleeve, displeased that his attention had wandered elsewhere. Theo shot her one last glance before regretfully turning back to the group at large.

The throng of students moving about remained impenetrable, but within minutes the slowly moving line of Slytherin first-years broke through the wall, entering upon a relatively unoccupied hallway on the first floor. Hermione remained lagging behind, feeling no wish to be among her Housemates in a deserted corridor. The Transfiguration classroom's door stood open, and Hermione, seeing sanctuary from the tension, sped past the gaggle of snakes and took up the seat directly before the professor's desk.

Hermione felt discouraged to find that the Professor wasn't present; instead a tabby cat lounged atop the desk, regarding her through sleepy, half-lidded eyes. Hermione tentatively smiled back. The scraping of chairs behind her snapped the girl out of her self-induced staring contest, and with a glance behind found that _brat _in the desk a row after her's, grinning rather cattishly at her. Parkinson stayed fastened to his sleeve, and Theo offered her a small smile from Malfoy's left. Hermione huffed and turned away, missing the hurt look that flashed across Theo's face.

Quiet chatter filled the room as the clock ticked along, no more than a minute to the start of class. The brunette was becoming antsy. The Professor was still absent, and that did not bode well for her. She could _feel_ Malfoy shift behind her, and a thin sheen of perspiration broke out on her forehead. Her nails tapped a random rhythm atop her desk, and her eyes darted to the clock. Thirty seconds remained until the start of class, and anxiety was welling like floodwater inside her. Just as Hermione's apprehension was turning to suffocating panic the clock chimed the start of class, and dead silence reigned heavily upon the students as they awaited the arrival of the Professor.

Nothing happened. Students regarded each other with a mixture of concern and pleasure at the Professor's prolonged absence. Hermione shifted herself; sweat dotting more heavily upon her face. The cat atop the table continued to blink lazily at her, and Hermione found herself enraptured by the sway of its tail and the gleam of its eyes.

What happened next was too fast to see with one's eyes alone. A great cacophony swept the class up with a roar, and before her very eyes the cat she had been watching so intensely vanished, replaced by the intimidating frame of a wiry old woman, decked in emerald robes. Hermione jumped so badly her desk scraped back, and she heard Malfoy swear loudly in pain. She hoped the desk had landed on his foot.

The stern woman peered sharply over the rim of spectacles, and Hermione swallowed hard. The class had become as silent and dead as a row of graves, and she could almost feel an eerie wind crawl over her skin as she waited with baited breath.

"Welcome to Transfiguration. I am Professor McGonagall, and for the duration of the year you will be under my tutelage."

Hermione let the breath she was holding out with a great _whoosh_, and the sound of others doing the same around the room was audible. McGonagall allowed herself a thin smile at their apprehension. The woman produced her wand from nowhere (or, that's how it seemed to dear, Muggleborn Hermione) and with a wave chalk lines swept across the front board in elegant scriptures.

Half the lesson was spent going over the basics of Transfiguration and the theories behind it, and Hermione kept notes voraciously. When half the allotted class time had passed the professor passed out matches, ordering the Slytherins to transfigure them into needles. Hermione, having paid a painful amount of attention to the lectures, went about the task with a studious, single-minded determination. McGonagall graced her with a smile, before frowning and moving across the room to reprimand a few students who were messing around in the back.

The remaining time for class slid by quickly, and in what seemed like no time McGonagall gave the word to pack up. She went about to collect the items, and when she brought them back to her desk she made note that only one needle stood out amongst the matches; she smiled again, and congratulated Hermione for her accomplishment, granting ten points. Hermione gave her a genuine smile in return.

The bell rang, and in a whirlwind the students were out the door, slinging bags haphazardly across their shoulders as they elbowed their way through the crowd already forming. Hermione, having no idea what was going on, pressed herself against the stone walls and extracted her schedule from her bag. The bold print announcing a thirty-minute break stared up at her, and with pursed lips she replaced the parchment in her bag. She had no idea what to do for that time, but she knew one thing; she _wouldn't_ be spending it with the other Slytherins.

* * *

The end of the break found Hermione waiting patiently outside the door to the History classroom, alone except for a few Slytherin first-years who likewise got it in their heads to arrive early ahead of the crowds. The brunette leaned against the wall with a sigh, holding the books required for the class tightly in front of her. Malfoy and his gaggle of fiendish sycophants hadn't arrived yet, but it was only a matter of time.

As if summoned Theo and Malfoy turned the corner, coming down the hall towards her at a leisurely, somewhat predatory pace (in Malfoy's case, anyhow). Pansy was, interestingly enough _not_ stuck to Malfoy like a second skin. Malfoy, perhaps noticing her confused expression, graced her with a perfectly cold sneer as he stopped before her.

"Oh, hello there, Mudblood. I had thought you left the school in shame when we didn't see you in the common room. Pity you're still here." He smirked at her, leaning in close. Hermione wrinkled her nose in disgust and leaned sideways in an attempt to put further space between them. His smirk widened. "I guess we should have expected no less. I knew you were still slinking around. I could _smell_ you from the dungeons."

Two Slyth girls, with whom Hermione was forced to share a dorm, snickered mildly at her. She scowled back in self-defense, her books coming closer to her chest as her grip tightened.

"Get lost, Malfoy," Hermione snarled involuntarily, leaning away further as her baser instincts kicked in. _Get away from the predators_. "I can't stand _your_ stench."

Malfoy straightened away from her, his face mimicking hers perfectly as his own nose curled in disgust. He spat at her feet, and as Hermione leapt away from the offending spot her pushed past her.

"Like I said, we should have expected no less. You are of filthy blood, after all."

Hermione opened her mouth to shoot off a fiery retort, but Theo placed a hand on her shoulder and shook his head. Malfoy grimaced acidly at him.

"Taking her side, Nott?"

Theo jumped away from her as if burned. Malfoy smirked once more, this time in satisfaction as the bell rang for the beginning of class. The door creaked open, and he pushed his way in. Theo and the other Slytherins dogged at his heels, forcing Hermione to enter last.

The room was rather well illuminated, bookshelves lining the walls except for the area taken up by the blackboard and the solitary, small window off the side. Dusty volumes weighed the shelves down with a groan, and Hermione paused in the doorway to gape appreciatively at them. The hacking of a throat clearing snapped her out of it, and she glared at Malfoy as he pulled his hand from his face, for all the world innocent.

"Gorge yourself later, Mudblood. Class is starting." His voice took on a familiar tone, warped almost beyond recognition by a nasally, know-it-all drawl. Hermione frowned as she recognized the mutilated echo of her voice, and looked around for an empty seat.

She barely refrained from cursing him. The two girls from earlier, Theo and Malfoy took up the center of the front row, and the albino smirked at her triumphantly. Every seat was filled up except for a solitary desk in the center of the room, and she groaned as she moved towards it cautiously. Her Housemates grinned at her toothily as she passed by them, sending quiet jeers and hissing in her direction. She deposited her books upon the wooden surface and seated herself after checking the desk for potential traps.

"Now that we are all seated let's start. Open your textbooks to page…"

That was how the History of Magic class started. Hermione listened to the harsh, repetitive droning, only her strong resilience to boredom allowing her to remain awake. As time passed students dropped like flies around her, heads slumping down on open textbooks, hair coming out of place and faces sticking to pages. Hermione allowed herself a small smirk of her own, feeling victory course through her veins as she continued to take notes. _She_ was the only one who could stay awake.

A sudden, jerking movement upon her desk snapped her out of her self-induced daze, and with the heavy feeling of stones sinking in her stomach she looked up, the grin falling from her face. Malfoy smirked at her from where he had twisted about in his chair, an empty hand raised in the act of throwing. He eyed her before leering gloriously, turning back to his own note taking.

Hermione scowled at him darkly, feeling all previous joy being sucked out of her as if someone had taken a vacuum to her heart. She bent her head over her parchment, her feet scuffling along the floor in a disheartened manner. Her right foot bumped something, however, and with a glance towards the professor to ensure she wasn't spotted, leaned over and swiped the offending object from the floor.

It was a crumpled ball of parchment. She frowned again, looking at the back of Malfoy's head, before bringing it to her lap. She unfolded it, careful of the crinkling sounds it made, until it lay fully opened, though thoroughly wrinkled, before her. She smoothed it over her knees and read the narrow, neat handwriting upon it.

'_Don't fall asleep, Granger._'

She huffed and crumpled it back up, tossing it back upon the floor irritably, struggling not to throw it at his head. She returned studiously to her note taking, and she could have sworn she heard Malfoy snicker up in the front row. She once again resisted the temptation to pitch her own parchment ball at him.

* * *

Lunch was a reprieve, though not a good one. Hermione had remained at the very end of the table, away from all others, still fuming over the History incident as she mutilated her broccoli. The second break after lunch did little to appease her anger, either, and the beginning of Herbology found her on the edge of the group of Slytherins before the greenhouses, struggling desperately not to snap someone's neck. Malfoy still occasionally smirked at her, as if they shared in some perverse, private joke, and it only served to fuel her temper.

Herbology helped, though. The professor was absolutely sweet and not at all prejudiced. Although her Housemates whispered venomously about her behind her back, Hermione felt rather taken with the plump older witch. Finally, someone who didn't judge her!

Not only the professor, but also the physical application in the class aided her in cooling her fury as well. It was especially pleasing to rip up weeds viciously, imaging each to have the face of Malfoy, all with a different pained, horrified expression as she tore them from the pots they infested. By the end of class she had earned Slytherin twenty points for her enthusiasm, and Theo was making sure to stay far, far from her, as if afraid she would do the same to him as she had done to the weeds.

She knew she shouldn't be feeling contented with her behavior, but the way the Slytherins took extra precaution to put distance between themselves and her on their way back to the castle was too deliciously ironic to ignore. At last, she had found a way to turn the tables.

Potions also served to boost her mood. She had feared that Professor Snape would pick on her, being the only Muggleborn in Slytherin, but to her utter surprise he ignored her completely, devilling the Gryffindors with a terrible vengeance and treating her as if she was simply another Pureblood. She was very much happy with this turn of events, but it was easy to see that her Housemates felt differently.

All through the class they attempted to ruin her work. Daphne Greengrass, the girl she was assigned to work with, seemed to care not how her grade in the class turned out. Hermione was constantly having to stop her from adding the wrong ingredients at the wrong time; adjusting the fire too much or too little, and that wasn't counting what Malfoy himself was up to. Her bad luck found him stationed behind her with Theo, and though Theo frowned disapprovingly at his friend's actions, Malfoy would wait until Hermione was focusing on the next step or chopping up ingredients before leaning forward, doing his best to remain stealthy as he tried to dump something into their cauldron.

Hermione didn't always manage to stop him, and at the end of class Greengrass and herself both walked away with zeroes for the day, Greengrass abnormally satisfied despite the bad grade she received. Several of the braver Gryffindors, who had witnessed the traitorous acts of her Housemates, offered her brief, sympathetic looks, but for the most part the other House ignored her existence. Those brief looks, however, worked to increase the other Slytherins' ire towards her, and Hermione found herself dreading dinner, and the time beyond.

* * *

Contrary to her fears dinner passed without trouble. Not once did her Housemates glare at her, sneer at her, or chuck food at her. They kept to themselves, and remained apparently oblivious to her presence at their table. Hermione was very suspicious as dinner came to an end, and purposefully stayed to the very back of the pack as the House returned to the dungeons, some siphoning off to pay a visit to the library or somewhere else. Never once did they look back at her as they entered the dungeons, then the common room, and Hermione felt relief as she climbed in, the last one to enter. Perhaps they had finally lain off their maltreatment of her.

The portrait hole clicked shut loudly behind her as she straightened, and she felt she should have known what was coming. The whole litter of first-years stood before her, shoulder to shoulder, arms crossed and defiant of her passing, some clutching wands; others, such as Crabbe and Goyle, cracking knuckles. Hermione took a step back…

Only to have her back collide with something hard. She glanced up, rather fearfully, and Flint, an upperclassmen and member of the Quidditch team, grinned down at her fiendishly. She stepped forward again, attempting to keep an eye on both him and her year-mates at once. A hand clasping onto her arm stopped her dead.

She turned, and Malfoy regarded her neutrally, expression abnormally lifeless; no pleasure shone through at her situation, and it was then, as he pushed her towards an armchair, that she realized just how serious her condition was.

"Let's talk," He told her mildly. He took the seat across from hers, Flint moving to stand silent vigil at his shoulder. Hermione remained firmly standing, chin pushed up courageously. Malfoy glared at her.

"_Sit_. I won't say it again."

Hermione was fully intending to disobey, but the suffocating act of the rest of the House closing in changed her mind. She tentatively took a seat.

"Let's start by pointing out what's wrong with this situation. Do you know what's wrong with this situation?" Malfoy questioned suddenly, as if it had dawned upon him that she was too dense to grasp the reality of her environment. Hermione bit back an insult, forcing herself to simply nod.

"Good. Then you'll know what I'm going to say next, but I'll say it anyways so it'll stick in your thick head. We are Slytherins. Slytherins are pureblooded, proud, and come from a long line of wizarding ancestry. We disdain Mudbloods—those who have Muggles as parents.

"_You_ are a Mudblood. _You_ are descended from Muggles. _You_ are tainted with filthy blood. And yet, _you_ are a Slytherin. Are you following? It makes no sense. Your presence here has completely shattered everything that makes Slytherin, Slytherin. Your presence cannot be tolerated."

Hermione's grip tightened upon the arm of her chair, her knuckles bleeding white with tension as she forced herself not to start shaking at the sudden, terrifying understanding that took hold of her. Malfoy watched her blandly.

"But your presence must be tolerated, as you have been Sorted into this House. So the rules are as follows: disobey no one. Do as they say. Do nothing that could soil the name of Slytherin. Do not socialize with Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, Mudblood sympathizers, Half bloods, or Mudbloods of any kind. Make no contact with your family. Do not even _think_ of making contact with your family. We will know. You will be watched. Tread carefully."

Hermione's grip had turned deadly now, her breathing coming in short, sharp gasps as she struggled not to panic. Malfoy smirked at her, as if suddenly apprehending just what was so pleasing about this situation. "If you fail to stand by these rules expect yourself to be sent to the Hospital Wing—perhaps even St. Mungo's. We do not tolerate traitors. You are already walking on a fine line by _being_ here. Tread carefully."

He finished, reiterating the seriousness of her circumstances. He stood, completely disregarding her deathly pale face, her sweating, he shaking. The House parted as he passed, and he ascended the stairs without a word. The House, seeing the entertainment as over, went about their routines as if nothing had happened.

Hermione remained in her chair, frozen in time, before her hands found her face. The tears came, unstoppable, and she shook and sobbed as her Housemates meandered around her. None noticed her distress, or if they did, they laughed and pointed. Hermione shut them out, not caring further if they saw her cry. She just _didn't care_ anymore. This was terrible. It truly felt as if she had been boxed in, cut off from the world, and left to suffocate to death in some maddeningly solitary form of _Hell_.

From his spot in the corner Theo watched her for a few minutes. When he could take it not longer he silently followed Malfoy, looking pointedly anywhere but at her.

* * *

**A/N: I would commit sepukku if I thought it would make it up to you guys, but then I wouldn't be alive to finish the story. And I said I would finish it, no matter how long it took. But still, I truly, sincerely, with all my heart apologize for this. It's been closing in on five months since I last updated, and I have but a few excuses.**

**Firstly, I had to go through finals, which was annoying, and also the state tests, which aren't that hard, but take up time. Schoolwork went on overload during these times, and I even had to discontinue really surfing the net to get things done. But I passed, maybe not with the highest grades, but I made it. **

**Now, it's a few weeks into summer, and I've been slowly adding to this chapter the entire time. I've also been suffering from writer's block, but I've written through it and managed to, somehow, break through it, so hopefully (hopefully!) I'll be able to continue with the regular updates, though I can't promise anything. The entire time I was writing I had to constantly go back and read over your reviews, to encourage myself to push my way through and finish this chapter while I still could, for you guys. I'm starting work this summer, so that'll cut into my time, as well, even more than school did, but weekends should allow me breaks to write.**

**That being said, I thank everyone who had the patience to stay with this story. It will continue, and I'll try my best to keep with the regular updates. Also, just to remind you in case you've forgotten, next chapter has the long awaited Draco/Damien encounter. Hopefully I'll be able to write it well enough to do the scene in my head justice.**

**Have fun with the rest of summer!**


	10. A Hiding To Nothing

**A Change in History: The Philosopher's Stone **

_A HP Fanfiction _

Disclaimer: I do not own HP. 

**Chapter Ten: A Hiding to Nothing **

_A Hiding to Nothing: 'To be faced with a situation that is pointless, as a successful outcome is impossible.' _

* * *

_Something was irrevocably wrong_.

Damien felt this thought clawing its way into his mind at breakfast the next morning, fork pausing on the way to his mouth as he scrutinized the Slytherin table. Even from this distance he could tell Hermione had been crying again—angry red ran wide rings around her eyes, and she was pale and drawn.

What struck him as wrong wasn't this. In fact, he had expected it. What was wrong was her Housemates' behavior. They never once looked in her direction; never once made a move to throw an insult at her. It was almost as if a chill veil had fallen around her, closing her in. She sat apart from the others, but sincerely closer to them than she had the day before.

Blaise gave halt to his own eating beside Damien, his eyes focusing on the odd circumstances surrounding the Slytherins as well.

"What do you think they did to her?" He asked, but no answer was forthcoming. There was no need.

Damien glanced at Blaise. The other boy met his gaze, grim confirmation shining in his eyes. They both knew what had happened.

Padma frowned at them from across the table, curious as to their conversation.

"Did to who?" She asked, poking at her eggs. She watched them and then followed their eyes, her own coming to rest on Hermione.

She frowned again. "Her? What's wrong? Everything looks normal."

Blaise shook his head in disbelief, resuming his chore of shoveling bacon into his mouth. Padma scowled at him in disgust as she turned back to her plate. She resumed her poking, but she did not eat. It seemed she had lost her appetite, though chances were she had no idea of why herself.

Damien looked down at his own breakfast, a brief grimace arresting his face. He knew Draco had done something to her. He even had an idea of what is was, though part of him hoped Draco wouldn't be so dense as to go that far—at least so early in the game.

* * *

Breakfast came to an end with no further mention of the troubles brewing in Slytherin House, Blaise consuming several plates before he was satisfied. Damien had eaten no more, and Padma had joined him in that deliberation. Students had already begun trickling out of the Hall, and with a final frown at Slytherin table Damien followed, Blaise at his side and Padma working to keep up with their brisk pace. Turpin toiled along, silent and oblivious to the morning exchange.

The first class of the day was Charms with the Slytherins, and Damien approached the prospect of the shared class with some mild apprehension. The feeling was heightened when he entered the room; Draco, Theo and _Parkinson_, of all people, held the front row on the Slytherin side, the rest of their year fanned out in a wide circle formation through the remaining seats. Hermione had been shuffled into the very center, completely surrounded and thoroughly cut off from the rest of the room.

Blaise shot her a small, glancing look of sympathy. She didn't catch it, though, and the two Ravenclaws were shunted into their seats without preamble. Padma and Turpin took to the row behind them as if it were their designated positions.

Charms was introduced as a class taught by the diminutive Professor Flitwick; a light-hearted fellow with a shock of white hair adding to his remarkable lack of height. His beginning speech was boring to Damien, though most of his fellow Ravenclaws were hanging off the man's every word.

Flitwick assigned the class as a whole the task of levitating a feather after his lengthy monologue, squeaking hearty warnings about proper pronunciation.

Damien rolled his eyes and settled his gaze on his feather. He pulled out his wand reluctantly, viewing the job of using it with distaste. He remembered when he had first learned to wield his magic; levitating a feather without a wand would undoubtedly be far harder than doing so with a wand.

He set about the chore with fervor. He remained careful to make his wand movements as precise as possible, having no trouble with pronouncing the spell. Blaise did the same next to him, the words flowing out like silk. His wand movements were naturally elegant, but lack of practice and refinement made them slightly jerky.

Time began to trickle past, and Damien dared to look up at the other side of the room. Theo was laboring through his spell casting with effort, sweat gathering so thickly on his face that it shined visibly, even from this distance. Draco held no issues with either his wand work or his pronunciation, but curiously his feather had yet to climb into the air.

Ten minutes passed. Fifteen minutes. Damien gritted his teeth, irritation skyrocketing. He had this spell down years ago, but his wand seemed to make even the simplest of tasks cumbersome. He was close to saying quits altogether, convinced he would never find a use for the stick in his hand…

…Until he heard clapping.

His head jerked up, surprise registering upon his face. A feather drifted neatly into the air, swaying slightly. Flitwick was applauding enthusiastically, face pink with glee. Hermione sat primly in her chair, her own face heating up from embarrassment and pleasure at her accomplishment—or from the effort of keeping the feather in the air, he didn't know.

"Oh, congratulations, Miss Granger! Everyone, look! Such wand work! Oh, ten points to Slytherin!"

Hermione gave a small smile as she let the feather return to the desk, hiding her face behind a curtain of hair—though it did not hide the smile. Flitwick turned from her, smiling anew as he went about to help other students, whose fervor with their work had increased tenfold, hoping to earn points as well. The Slytherins graced her with sour, jealous looks.

Draco's eye twitched.

Damien huffed a bit himself as he glared at his own, stalwartly dormant feather. He started with fresh determination, but by the end of class he had not yet accomplished the task of getting it to float.

* * *

He could tell the break after class was not going to be pretty. The students filed out with some order, glad to be out. Some were exclaiming their disappointment over failing to properly cast the spell, but the idea of trying again next class was enough to turn their conversations to other topics.

Damien lingered behind, hidden against the wall. A rush of Slytherins tumbled out beside him, sour of face and demeanor. Hermione was jostled along near the back, Malfoy dogging at her heels with Pansy and Theo in tow. It appeared as though he had yet to say anything to her, but the fearful expression on the brunette's face was enough to tell Damien what Draco had to say would be anything but congratulatory.

He sent Blaise ahead, telling him with his eyes to stay out of it. Draco's small group—Hermione with them—detached from the main flow, turning a corner down the hallway. Damien stealthily followed, a shadow as he tailed their progress through the winding halls.

It wasn't long before they were alone. The hallways in this part of the school were deserted during this part of the day, and it suited Draco's plan well. Promptly the blonde swung around to block Hermione's progress, stony eyes boring into her nervous ones. Pansy hung back, looking decidedly like the cat with the cream. Theo remained behind Hermione, his idea to quietly support her; instead inadvertently cutting off any method of escape.

Damien's eyes narrowed as he watched from around the corner. This reeked of foul play, something Damien wasn't exactly a champion of.

"So," Draco began after some thought, straightening. His eyes gleamed oddly. "You figured you could get away with upstaging us. Didn't we warn you yesterday?"

Hermione paled slightly, nervousness spilling across her face. To her credit, however, she gathered her courage and stared back defiantly, jaw set strongly as she met his cold gaze with one of her own. "You never said I couldn't do well in class!"

Draco sneered. Damien leaned further forward, trying to get a better look at the situation.

"'_Do nothing to soil the name of Slytherin._'" The Slytherin boy quoted, lips curling up in a mocking manner. "We can't have a Mudblood doing better than anyone else, now can we?"

Hermione bristled unconsciously, a small slide to her feet announcing her wish to back away. She held her own, though. "That shouldn't be against the rules!"

Damien could stomach no more, knowing how things would progress if he didn't make his presence known now. He stepped out from the shadows of the corner, taking note of the look on Pansy's face as he leaned casually against the wall. The girl had paled, her nails suddenly digging into Draco's arm as she backed up to stand beside him.

He looked at her, pulling his arm out of her grasp.

"_What?!_" He snapped; annoyed that she had interrupted him.

Pansy merely pointed.

By this time Damien had attracted the attention of both Hermione and Theo. The former had shock and relief blending on her visage, and the latter looked to be trying to hide behind her—however badly _that_ was turning out.

Draco turned to see, surprise crossing his face as he sighted his friend.

"Damien," He greeted cordially, as if nothing at all was wrong with the scene playing out around them.

Damien inclined his head in acknowledgement.

"Draco," He greeted, a slight coolness warning Draco that all was not well. The blonde raised an eyebrow.

"Something the matter?"

His voice gave away nothing, but Damien could detect, if he concentrated hard enough, the faintest hints of a steely edge to the inquiry.

Damien sighed and pushed off from the wall, waving a hand to dismiss Pansy and Theo. The girl jumped to obey, no color remaining in her face as she scurried from the hall. Theo was a bit more hesitant, looking between the remaining three, but a hard look from Damien sent him following in Pansy's footsteps.

Draco watched them go without expression. Hermione still stood before him, looking between the two. It was obvious she could sense the tension, but the underlying messages flying between the two boys soared well over her head—despite the fact they were all roughly the same height.

Draco knew there was more to this than what met the eye. He offered the Dark Heir a thin, monochrome smile. Damien returned the gesture. The two would appear to be old friends, welcoming each other and preparing for a long conversation over lunch.

Hermione took a step back; her face paler than it had been at breakfast.

'_Good,_' Damien thought, '_She's starting to pick up on it_.'

A few minutes passed by. The pieces remained unmoving, waiting for the players to issue their next move.

Draco took a step forward. The temperature dropped several degrees, and the spell that had been woven over the trio broke violently. Draco's smile had turned distinctly vicious.

"Damien, what a pleasant surprise it is to find you here. To be honest I thought you'd be down in the library by now. You've always liked to read books."

Hermione looked confused, as if wondering why Damien's presence there would be cause for such reactions.

Damien had picked up on instantly. What Draco had really meant to ask was, '_Why did you follow? This isn't Ravenclaw business. Let me handle this thing._'

Damien shook his head, and sharp affront flashed across Draco's face. Damien knew what he was thinking; the blond thought Damien found him incapable of dealing with one little Mudblood in a satisfactory manner.

"Eh, didn't feel like reading today," He responded more for Hermione's benefit than Draco's. If she felt there was something deeper than the surface conversation there would be no doubt she'd try to dig into it. "I saw you and Theo running off somewhere, and you know me. Always curious."

Draco's smile vanished. "It's no wonder you were a Ravenclaw and not a Slytherin."

Icy accusation laced his words, but Damien didn't flinch from them.

"I guess it isn't," He replied, ignoring the taken aback expression of his friend. "But even if what you Slytherins get up to isn't any of my business, I'm still not going to let you bully a Housemate around."

Damien looked past Hermione—who looked equal parts relieved and suspicious—trying to catch Draco's eye, hoping to communicate to him his idea. Draco refused to take the hint, though, and huffed.

"Fine. So you'd rather side with a Mudblood than with me. I see how it is." His nose curled up farther, and a dark, throbbing anger and betrayal loomed behind his eyes. "You're unfit for your post."

Draco turned his back on them both then, storming down the hall with hell-like fury. Damien was left with Hermione in the hall, staring after Draco and fighting against the urge to sigh his weariness. It had always been difficult dealing with Draco; the blond was always jumping to conclusions and assuming he knew right.

A choked hiccup caught his attention, and he turned, startled, to find Hermione pressing a sleeve to her eyes, shaking and breathing erratically. Damien rolled his eyes, hardly daring to believe that the girl who had been so defiant and 'brave' a few minutes ago looked about ready to burst into tears.

"Hey," He said gruffly, trying to be nice but choking on the attempt, "don't start. You got out unscathed. What are you crying for?" He asked, alarmed as the brunette muffled a hiccupy sob. Ah, he had never been good with crying girls; his only experience had been with Pansy and the present girl on their first day.

She gave a half-hearted, teary smile as she pulled her sleeve away. Her eyes were already puffing up, reddening. Tear tracks pushed sticky trails down her cheeks.

"I'm…s-sorry…" She gave a tiny laugh. "I'm not v-very br-brave…a-and…you've been…so n-nice to me…so…"

She sniffled again, and Damien rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. He turned to walk away—thoroughly intent upon leaving the scene before she got weepy again—but a heavy weight on his sleeve slowed him down.

Hermione had taken hold of his robe, and gave him a pleading look as she hugged his arm.

"N-no, d-don't leave…" She wiped her face against her shoulder. "I…I don't w-want them coming b-back again…"

Damien flinched at the contact; trying to quell the silent mantra of _get off get off get off get off get off—_inside his head. Instead the arm trapped by the girl twitched, and he dragged her down the corridor like a dead weight; swearing that the moment they got near other people he was pushing her off him.

* * *

Despite what he had promised himself, he didn't manage to shake her off until the end of break; forced to suffer through the teasing of upper classmates ("oh, aren't they cute? Dating already!" which made Hermione smile and blush, her woes well gone by then) Damien was glad to get her off him as they parted ways for their next class—her to Transfiguration and him to DADA.

Blaise was waiting for him in front of Quirrell's classroom; a knowing, entertained smirk creeping across his carefully maintained poker face.

"Stuff it," Damien growled at him, but Blaise's smirk simply grew.

"I didn't say anything."

The day passed by with little further activity; although Damien kept a sharp lookout on Quirrell during class, he showed no further manifestations of red, glowing eyes, leaving the Dark Heir quite disappointed. After lunch and second break they once again had Herbology, and Damien forced himself to suffer through both the heat and the professor's nauseating bubbliness.

They, thankfully, had the afternoon off, and with lighter hearts than they had possesses earlier they trudged down to the lake, flopping down under the shade of the nearest tree and listening to the quiet lapping of the water. Time passed easily; Blaise tossing rocks across the lake in an attempt to stir the squid to the surface, Damien silently working through his pathetic excuse for homework.

Sooner than they would have liked dinner approached, and they left to eat their fill. They were learning to ignore the presence of Padma and Turpin, who made it their business to yap the ears off the boys during the entirety of the feast.

More than once Damien found himself glancing in the direction of the Slytherin table; hoping to catch Draco's eye, or Theo's eye at least. All he found was grateful smiles from the Muggleborn he had rescued earlier that day, and an occasional, swift glare from the blond boy in question.

Damien frowned at he turned back to his treacle tart. He was coming to hate what he had done earlier.

**

* * *

**

**A/N: Bah, this chapter gave me so much trouble…especially since the seventh book has been distracting me; filling my head with more ideas than I can handle. But I've been working on it slowly, and I finally managed to finish it tonight.**

**Speaking of the seventh book, it enthralled me as equally as it repulsed me. There are many issues I have with it, despite the fact that it proved every single one of my theories true, but I can't talk about that here, in case some people haven't read it yet. **

**Anyhow, I still plan to continue this story, despite the fact that the HP series is complete. It's proved to make the flow of the plot both easier and harder in different aspects, and because I like to abide by canon as much as possible, even in AUs, I think I might have to change a few things to fit (it won't change how the general story goes, though). **

**Anyhow, here's to hoping the eleventh chapter won't take me as long as this one did, or give me as much trouble (next: Potions class…How…fun…) **


	11. Down the Rabbit Hole

**A Change in History: The Philosopher's Stone**

_A HP Fanfiction_

Disclaimer: I do not own HP.

**Chapter Eleven: Down the Rabbit Hole**

* * *

The constant 'drip-drip' of water striking cold stone somewhere beyond in the labyrinth of dungeon was something Damien was startled to find irked him as a constant annoyance. With each plop of liquid echoing down the halls an eye twitched, or a finger, fidgeting with the lapels of his robe until Damien felt certain the first to say anything to him would be soundly cursed.

Instead, the rest of the Ravenclaws lined the wall across to the Potions classroom before Snape's office in an orderly fashion, spaced out exactly five inches between each black-clad figure, ranging from the shortest on the far right to the tallest on the far left.

Damien's eye twitched harder.

"Oi," Blaise mumbled under his breath, sticking his hands under his armpits as he pressed his back snugly to the wall aside Damien, a foot from the classroom door, "stop that. It's bad enough they think we're loonies, you don't need to go about proving it."

As an odd looking fellow shifted his feet ever so slightly, eliciting heated and outraged glares from Padma and half the rest of the first-year girls Damien suppressed another twitch with effort.

"Their perfectionism is grinding at my last nerve."

Blaise would have been inclined to sympathy, save for the whole of the last night Damien had kept him wide awake; muttering vile and gruesome tortures for the boys who had snapped at him for leaving his shoes next to his bed, instead of at the foot of it. "Take deep breaths. Imagine you're playing Quidditch. Or studying. Cursing Draco."

A tiny pinch at the corner of Damien's mouth advertised his amusement plainly to Blaise, and the dark-skinned boy straightened up, though his hands remained tucked out of sight beneath the billowing folds of his sleeves. "He can't be long now. I heard a seventh year telling Turpin that Snape hates letting people roam about down here, if they aren't Slytherins."

As if summoned the man himself stalked down the hall, robe catching an illusionary wind behind him. Almost entirely as one the other first-years snapped to attention, backs ramrod straight and eyes boring perfectly round holes in the wall above Blaise and Damien's heads. Snape spared them an infinitesimal glance as he swung by, opening the door to the classroom and stepping through the threshold. From inside he glared at them with ill-kept impatience.

"Well? Move! I won't have you standing there all day."

The Ravenclaws, abandoning their dignity, scrambled in their haste to accede to his wishes, piling in through the door as though it were a portal to another dimension—that of learning. Blaise rolled his eyes as he stepped after them, hauling his pewter cauldron with him.

"I hope they mellow out soon. Makes you sick just watching them."

The whisper was almost lost to Damien as he followed, examining the room as Blaise pulled him to a table in the middle of the room.

It was dimly lit within, large enough to easily accommodate a double class. Along the walls shelves stood ceiling-high, packed tightly but neatly with an array of disgusting but fascinating paraphernalia. He couldn't see them clearly from near the doorway, but things relatively large in size floated within them; bubbles prickling their surfaces. A large basin, round and of rough but durable stone lay in the corner, a gargoyle's gaping mouth acting as a shoot for the water to froth from. Where it went after being used in the basin, Damien couldn't figure out. A narrow, dark door barely distinguishable from the wall peeked out in the dim, and Damien shot it a curious glance as Blaise tugged him to their self-appointed table.

Blaise took it upon himself to arrange their tools along the table in an orderly fashion, the cauldrons aligned just so, with the edge of the table a half foot away; a safe distance. Damien observed their Professor.

A moderately tall man, he seemed taller with the presence resonating around the room. Voluminous black robes cloaked his frame, and lanky, limp black hair damp with the greasy perfume of potions hung in his face. A hooked nose and black, sharp eyes sunken in sallow skin completed the ensemble, and though he may not seem a harmful man, physically, Damien knew twice as well as any other in the class what he was capable of.

Professor Snape shot him a small glance as Damien took his seat. He swept up the front, before his desk and the chalkboard that lay blank and perfectly clean on the wall. Damien noted there wasn't a spot of dust anywhere in the room.

"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art that is potionmaking. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses…I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death." His dark eyes darted to Damien upon the pronunciation, too quick for the norm to catch, had they not been looking for it. But Damien had been looking for it, and he had seen it, and a million questions, outraged and not, poured into his mind. "You here are of the house of Ravenclaw. Unlike with Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs, I expect to have no trouble with you, and for you to follow instructions perfectly, and without question."

Around the room small, sneaking grimaces were tossed between students, most tucked side by side among the half of the chamber nearest to the door. Professor Snape pretended not to notice.

"Your instructions," He said suddenly and with a snapping curtness, "are on the board." Out of seeming nowhere he produced a slim wand, and with a silent wave words scribbled themselves elegantly along the length of the board, naming and detailing the potion and the instructions by which it was to be made. Damien eyed it incredulously; jaw working with a silent fury at the simplicity of the task. He essayed to catch the eye of the professor, but almost immediately he had turned his back on his students, hands working unseen to cater something atop his desk.

Damien huffed quietly and sunk deeper into his seat, arms crossed and resolution to take no part of this task welling within him. Around the room his fellow classmates were scrambling to draw out the required materials, meek and quiet as mice in their work. Somewhere he heard the hiss of a gas fire heating up beneath a pewter cauldron. Blaise elbowed him shortly.

"Hey," He muttered, eyes finding Professor Snape's back. "Is it alright if I do this myself? I've never been good at Potions." The silent admonition was that Damien knew this very well.

The boy in question waved his hand absently, eyes still melting tunnels at the back of Professor Snape's head. "I trust you. You can't possibly mess up a first-year potion."

Blaise grimaced but shuffled back into his seat, gingerly taking into consideration the instructions, measurements and ingredients necessary. If he stared any harder he might set the parchment aflame, which was easily what Damien was attempting to do to Professor Snape.

The lesson dragged on indeterminately. Snape never once presented anything but his back to Damien, almost crab-like in his movements between the rows of desks to observe and note the conditions and progress of each pair's potion. Blaise was near to sweating over his, stirring with a strict caution, one eye on the parchment for the next step, the other gauging the state of the fire beneath the cauldron as he worked. And Damien? He lounged in his chair, or seemed to, watching Snape pass around the room once, twice, thrice, four times without once looking at him, or stopping at their table to check their potion. It seemed to make Blaise nervous, and after a while he breathed out a heavy sigh of relief; leaning over his potion as it billowed a soft plume of sour perfume.

"Done," He said after his preemptory examination. He gestured for Damien to look. "I think I got it right. It looks the right color, anyway."

Damien didn't get up. He simply took a deep whiff of the smoke of scent lazily swirling in the air above and around them. "It's right."

Blaise frowned at him, perhaps distempered for his lack of enthusiasm, but simply filled and plugged a flask for sampling. He set it down gently upon the scuffed wooden surface before him and settled back in his chair; quickly reverting to fidgeting as time trickled by.

At the end of the hour Professor Snape returned to the front, and for the first time since the start of the period turned to face the room as a whole. Damien promptly proceeded to throwing mental napalms at the man's eyes, vying vaguely for the man's attention with shifting gaze and rapid tapping of fingers atop the table.

Professor Snape didn't look at him once. In fact, he studiously avoided looking in that direction of the classroom, and ended up addressing the empty half of the class.

"Flask your samples and bring them to the front. And don't _drop_ them, for Merlin's sake." A scrawny boy jumped from whence he had barely recovered his own flask before it hit the floor, and the Ravenclaw flinched and hurried to turn it in.

Damien, seizing his chance, scooped up the flask before Blaise could take it, slinging his bag over his shoulder as Blaise took their cauldrons to the basin for a wash. He hung back, waiting until everyone else was queued in line before tottering to join it.

It went by with a moderate quickness, and before Damien could shift his feet three times he was before Professor Snape's desk, finding himself a sudden competitor in a stony game of staring. He steeled himself and stared back, bringing his Occlumency shields up partly in self-defense.

The bell rang, and the rest of the first-years hurried out of the class, looking at the pair locked in a silent battle of wills with strange expressions painted across their faces. Blaise made to hang back, but a hidden gesture on Damien's part sent him out of the room following the tide, quietly shutting the door behind him.

Silence reigned. Somewhere Damien could hear the faint, echoing ticks of a clock as it worked, and as the clock ticked its eightieth Severus broke gazes with him, folding hands with a steady calm atop the papers before him. Damien didn't glance at it.

"You'll be late, Mr. Morgan," Severus said at last, smooth and unruffled as a snake waiting in the bushes, silent and still.

"It's lunch. I have all the time in the world," Damien bit back, an unintentional harshness worming its way into his tone. He blinked in surprise, but swiftly fixed an expression of consternation upon his visage.

Severus arched a thin black eyebrow. "Do you? I'm not a gambling man, but I'd guess to take that wager."

Damien blinked again and a hard wooden chair had appeared a hair from his leg, short but stout and well serving of its purpose. Damien took it with a barely concealed grimace.

"To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?" Severus continued. He hadn't blinked once yet, Damien noted warily.

"You've been avoiding me."

"This is the first I've been face to face with you yet."

Damien scowled fiercely. "You know what I mean."

Snape grew quiet. "Do I? Your exhibition the other day was quite startling."

The sudden change of subject almost managed to throw him, but Damien held on with a stubborn steadfastness. "You can hardly call it uncalled for."

"I don't recall using those terms in reference to it."

Damien bit his tongue harshly to fight back the scathing words bubbling in his throat. He had to be patient. They had played this game a thousand times, a thousand times a thousand, and it never changed, never altered its scheme or structure. Patience. "How have things been going on your end?"

Severus shifted, ever so slightly, and Damien's eyes sharpened in acknowledgement of the change. So, something _had_ happened. It was only a matter of puzzling out what.

"Nothing that concerns you," Severus replied mildly. Suddenly there was no chair beneath Damien, and he had to hastily leap forward to avoid hitting the floor rump first.

"_Nothing that concerns me_?" Damien hissed, anger at the rude gesture spilling out of his mouth in the form of words. "I'm the bloody _Dark Heir_! Anything and everything concerning _you_ concerns _me_!"

Almost as fast as Damien had reached his feet Snape did the same, his chair banging back with the sudden movement.

"Fool! Fool child! You haven't changed your ways at all! My personal business," He spat in a low voice, "is not the fodder for thought for you! It has nothing to do with you, or your little tag-alongs, or _him_, so I _suggest_ you take your things and make your way to the Great Hall. You wouldn't want to miss your lunch." The last was tacked on as a cold, blunt blow of lead. "And for love of independent thought, brat, don't _say that name here_!"

Snape came flying out from behind the table like a bat out of hell; a great, winged, infuriated bat that swept Damien up in the beating of them and roughly shoved him out the door. It slammed shut with a bang behind him, and with a spat curse Damien pounded and tugged at it. It wouldn't budge. He continued so for several minutes, a number of rather unsavory names and belligerencies dripping from his tongue, but when it became obvious his fits and demands would garner no response, he kicked the door as hard as he could and turned away.

Blaise had left his cauldron for him beside the door, and he swung it up with furious muttering. With one last look at the door he stormed off. Not to the Great Hall; the library was calling to him, with its quiet and its solitude, its seclusion from the rest of the school. Perhaps he would be lucky enough to find a good book filled to the brim and overflowing with nasty jinxes and hexes he could use on the man. Perhaps.

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**Freaky.**

**Sorry for taking so long. School's been killer, but tonight I had no homework, so I could sit down and type this up. It's nice to be writing this again… I'm glad everyone continues to read, now that the HP series is over, and no matter how long it takes, I'm planning on finishing this. I don't think it'll leave me alone if I don't.**

**Anyhow, not much to say this chapter. Guess I'll have more next time. The plot's speeding up, now…**


	12. Something To Be Concerned About

**A Change in History: The Philosopher's Stone**

_A HP Fanfiction_

Disclaimer: I do not own HP.

**Chapter Twelve: Something to Be Concerned About

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"..-ien."

No response.

"-amien."

Nothing.

"_DAMIEN_!!"

"_What_??"

The boy, his impatience finally at an end yanked the curtains of his bed apart, glaring with all the aggrieved airs of a scientist interrupted in the process of making a groundbreaking discovery. Blaise held his hands up in wary defense.

"Calm down…You weren't answering me."

Damien huffed, letting his bed hangings fall back into place; only half shielding his body from view. He toyed with the open Charms book before him, wand held in a vice grip at his side.

"What?" He repeated, infinitely calmer than he had been a moment before. Blaise waited a few moments, assuring his continued livelihood should he speak before he opened his mouth.

"Break's almost over. We have to get going or we'll be late for History."

Damien grumbled as he moved away, scowling heavily in repressed fury at the book lying innocently before him. As if it wasn't bad enough he was reduced to _practicing_ with his own bloody wand to get the simplest of magic correct, but Blaise had the _good fortune_ to see him at it. The treatment he had suffered earlier that morning at the hands of his Potions master—who he had dared consider friend and ally!—along with his continued failure to produce satisfactory results with his wand rankled at him deeply.

He slammed the book shut forcefully before sliding off the mattress, glad the dormitory was empty save for them. He stuffed his wand in the pocket of his robes and pulled his bag closer.

Shoving the Charms textbook in the bag and zipping it shut with a growl, he swung it over his shoulder and stalked to where Blaise awaited him at the door.

"Shut up."

Blaise shrugged, having become too accustomed to this treatment during lunch to mind.

* * *

History passed in a sluggish haze of irritation for Damien; wand beneath the desk, he struggled to conquer the growing issue of its absurd disobedience. Binns' droning went in one ear and out the other, a distracting background noise to the cumbersome task of getting a quill to float, even if only an inch above his hand.

History behind them; his self-appointed goal unfulfilled; and anger blazed a perfect trail through him as he stomped down to Charms with Blaise in tow. They were to continue what had been started in the first class the day before, and Damien knew, if he didn't succeed today, there'd be hell to pay.

The class went much as it had before, most students struggling to have their quills floating in the air. Granger was excused from the task, having accomplished it the day before, and sat across the room from Damien, reading quietly.

But Damien paid her no mind. Indeed, all his focus was pinpointed on the quill resting stolidly on the desk before him, simply _refusing to move_!

His finger twitched, the ceaseless want to simply cast the spell wandlessly overpowering. But Damien wasn't stupid; no doubt it would be noticed immediately if his wand weren't employed, and he didn't relish the idea of spending dinner explaining to Flitwick how he got his magic to work without a wand.

Instead he suffered in silence, temper simmering dangerously hot just below the surface of his skin. By the end of class a number had achieved success, Blaise, Draco, Padma, Turpin and a few others besides included. Damien refused to look at the Slytherin side of the class; knowing instinctively that Draco would be gloating in his direction.

Gods, he'd have to have a talk with that little bugger, and soon. He didn't know how much longer he could stand the disrespect!

Class ended to a frenzy of students rushing to leave, most, if not all intent upon their supper waiting in the Great Hall. Damien stooped to retrieve his bag and stuffed his materials within, anger advertised clearly with every movement. By then everyone was gone, Blaise included; Damien couldn't begrudge him that, taking the boy's appetite into consideration. He stood and made to leave, but a hand on his sleeve brought him up well short of the door.

"A moment, if you please, Mr. Morgan," Professor Flitwick requested in that squeaking tenor of his, a good foot-and-a-half squatter than Damien. He peered up at the Ravenclaw from behind round spectacles perched on his wide nose, and with trepidation Damien sat himself in the nearest chair. "Good, good, let's have a talk then, shall we? Oh, don't worry, I'll send you along to dinner soon enough, yes, you don't have to worry about that…"

Damien felt something clench his stomach as he watched the little professor gaze at him, as though the man was inspecting an utterly fascinating new specimen he had never before known existed.

"Ah, no need to scowl so, Mr. Morgan, it's just a talk. I'm sure you don't want to be reminded of the… ah, spectacle you made in the Great Hall the other day, but I must _say_, that was a very ingenious ward you cast! I haven't seen its like in a very long time, yes…"

The sensation of something monstrous squeezing the lifeblood out of his gut increased tenfold, and he inconspicuously pressed a hand to his stomach.

"The ward?" He finally managed, sounding rather sick. His anger at the world was already draining itself fitfully from his being, replaced by the sticky sensation of growing fear. Flitwick frowned at him with concern and puzzlement.

"Why yes, my dear boy, that splendid ward you conjured the other day, I daresay you remember it? You are looking a mite pale…perhaps I should send you to Poppy instead of dinner, then, afterwards?"

"Ah, no," Damien stuttered out, unnerved by the almost single-minded way his professor went about talking. The pressure his hand was applying to his middle strengthened. "There's no need. I skipped lunch today, it's probably just hunger."

Flitwick nodded as if that made perfect sense, which he supposed it did, but Merlin, the man was unsettling! "Now, about that ward, Mr. Morgan…"

Damien swallowed thickly. "Just something I picked up from a book I read once."

Flitwick perked up in interest, scurrying away to pull a tall stool before the bookshelf in the corner of the room. "Ah, a book, you say? Which, may I ask? I may very well have a copy of it here, wonderful collection, all very good authors…"

"_Self-Defensive Spellwork_," Damien muttered after what seemed a long time but was no more than a mere second, watching the man start and reach for a different shelf with growing apprehension. Stupid, stupid, stupid! How could he have forgotten about the blasted ward? He should have known the man would come asking!

'_Stupid_!'

"Ah, here we are," Flitwick squeaked, hopping off the stool and moving back to where Damien sat, stupefied. "Ah, _Wards_, a very useful subject… Where did you come by this book? It's not something first-years are required to read."

"Malfoy Manor," He managed, stumbling to untie his tongue, "they have a very large library, really nice."

'Really nice'? Was that all he could come up with?

'_Stupid_!'

That really was becoming an irritating mantra, but he couldn't help himself. Flitwick made an 'uhmm' sound of acknowledgement, his expression plain enough to tell Damien the man was gearing up for a long discussion on spells.

"Look, Professor," He said at last, pushing himself off the desk on which he sat. His stomach was rebelling, and fear dredged up an awful illness in him. "It's all well and good, but if you don't mind, I'm rather hungry. May I head to dinner now?" The last came through gritted teeth, an instinctive pulling away for one's own safety. Danger ground to tread, this, especially given the complexity of the topic at hand.

"Hmm?" Flitwick looked up from the book, as though realizing for the first time Damien was there. "Oh, yes, I suppose…but I really would like to have a discussion with you one day."

Damien nodded and swept up his bag, making a beeline for the door: trying to get out as soon as possible, but making a pained effort to not look like he was rushing.

"Oh, and Mr. Morgan!"

Damien stopped in the doorway, muscles tensing at the odd note in his professor's voice.

"I really would like to know why you could cast a ward such as this but seem to have such trouble with the Levitation charm."

Damien bolted out the door before he could answer.

* * *

Dinner was an edgy affair. Any hunger Damien might have felt at the end of Charms class was dead and shriveled in his stomach by the time he reached the Great Hall, plopping next to Blaise with a great outtake of air.

Blaise spared him a glance; fork well on its way to his mouth, laden with a hefty chunk of steak that dripped sauce back onto his plate. Damien flinched a bit when Blaise swallowed it down with ease.

"Trouble?" Was all he asked, blissfully ignoring any panic on Damien's part as he continued to eat. In a way it helped Damien calm down as well, but he still felt rather shifty as he eyed the doors to the Entrance Hall, waiting for Flitwick to walk in at any moment. He never did.

"…No." He said after a moment, forking some potatoes onto his plate, even though his stomach heaved at the sight of it. Nerves were nothing good to suffer from when you're trying to eat, Damien had learned. "Nothing."

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**A/N: Ah, I finally got the chance to answer the question some of you were asking about Flitwick not mentioning the ward before. Well, it's kind of hard to ask someone a question when they leave your class before you can catch them, ne? Anyways, kind of fun to write.**

**And I fully plan to keep to a 'one post a week' schedule! I've found a method that helps me a bit inspiration-wise for starting each chapter, so hopefully I can stick to it, so hopefully this works out. :)**

**And short? Maybe, but I'm tired and I'd like to think this chapter stands well enough on its own. Next chapter...Well, you'll have to wait and see. **


	13. PREVIEW

**Chapter Thirteen: Preview**

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Thursday passed slightly warm but cloudy; what wind there was that day seeped through the stones of the corridors and cooled the worn flagging beneath the feet of the students. Damien grimaced at the feeling, shifting from one cold foot to another as he waited for Blaise to finish. Even in the dorms the cool could not be escaped, and Damien had already grabbed a thicker cloak than the one he had left with that morning.

"Hurry up," He grumbled, irritation at the weather adding fuel to the fire of his thoughts. Blaise poked his head around the curtains of his bed, leveling a calm look at Damien.

"Hold on. It's not like dinner's going to run off on all fours."

Damien muttered but settled back to continue waiting, watching as Blaise resumed rooting through his trunk for his fugitive cloak. It was true; dinner had only just begun, and wasn't likely to vanish before they arrived. Still, Damien felt a gnawing apprehensiveness in being confined to the circular room. After the unnerving episode with Flitwick the previous day, Draco's continued venue of disrespect, and Severus' refusal to look at him once again in class today Damien felt he held perfect rights to be edgy. As was, Flitwick could very well be ascending the stairs of the tower at that moment, and Damien didn't relish being stuck in the same room with him, left no possible avenues of escape from the inevitable interrogation.

"Will you hurry?" He snapped as that thought settled heavily in his mind. He had to stop himself from looking at the door.

"Got it," Blaise replied, straightening and holding up the material in his hand. Damien grunted and all but ran to the door, throwing it open and taking the steps two at a time down. He heard Blaise give a muffled curse from behind him and the door slamming as Blaise made to catch up to him.

It wasn't that he was hungry; quite the contrary, Damien felt he couldn't even stomach a spoonful of broth then. More than nerves had been racking at him; a growing feeling of unease had begun tugging at his mind, and the less he dwelled upon it, the more insistently it tugged at him; the more attention he paid to it, the more it drove him mad. There was no way for him to win.

It took them little time to reach the Great Hall; the corridors were, by now, very familiar to them. Upon entering Damien made a show of not looking at the staff's table; but when he finally did look, after seating himself next to Blaise and pulling a plate of food to him, Flitwick wasn't there. Damien felt a pulse of relief in him.

"Good to see you aren't starving yourself," Blaise muttered around his own mouthful of peas, and Damien turned away from his vigil in surprise. His fork was poised above his plate, but other than to load it he hadn't touched his food. He grimaced at Blaise and tried to eat, mechanically chewing everything he put into his mouth. It all tasted like ash to him, and before half his food was gone he shoved his plate away, eyes drawing irresistibly to the staff table. Flitwick still wasn't present, but not only he was missing; neither Severus nor Quirrell were there, either. He frowned at that, and his sense of unease grew.

* * *

Friday came and passed, with the same as it had been yesterday; Severus still refused to look at him, he still couldn't yet get his wand to work, and History was easy enough to allow him to catch up on the sleep he had missed the night before. The trouble, though, came after Charms class. Damien had made absolute certain he came in right before the bell rang for class to begin, and made it a point to avoid the professor during class. Oddly, though, Flitwick spared him no more attention than any other student that day; he did, however, insist that whomever had not managed to get their feather to float at the end of class to practice over the weekend. Damien almost thought himself clear when the bell rang, dismissing everyone; that was, until Flitwick fought his way through the rush of students to his side.

"I hope you don't mind, Mr. Morgan, but would you mind staying for a bit after class? Your friend can stay, too, if he likes," he added when Blaise shifted at Damien's side.

Damien, after a moment's consideration shook his head at Blaise.

"It's alright, you go on ahead."

Flitwick waited until Blaise left and the door shut behind him before bouncing along to his desk, fiddling with the end of his wand.

"Very good, very good…Ah, take a seat, if you please, go on…"

Damien, by now accustomed somewhat to Flitwick strange mannerisms seated himself at the nearest desk, setting his bag down beside him.

"Now, Damien—you don't mind if I call you Damien, do you? — our conversation got cut short the other day, I'm afraid—"

"No, really professor, it's fine—"

Flitwick cut Damien off in turn, shaking his head. "It's not fine, but we can continue now, if you like. Seeing as how it's lunchtime, would you like me to ask the elves for anything? Tea, perhaps? I would offer my office for this, but I'm afraid it's still a bit messy. Beginning-of-the-year issues, you know."

"Er…sure."

Damien was allotted a blessed five minutes to gather his thoughts as Flitwick summoned an elf, gave their order and settled down at his desk. Five minutes, and Damien spent all of it wringing his mind for a plausible answer to Flitwick's late question to him. How _was_ he going to explain the ward when he couldn't even use the Levitation spell? He stomach crunched itself into knots.

"Ah," Flitwick exhaled softly when the tea tray popped into existence on the wood before him, "Earl Gray, lovely brand… Do you take anything with your tea?"

Damien didn't really care about the tea, and the cup floated over to him with nothing added.

"Now, Damien, we both know why I asked you to stay behind. That ward _was_ rather lovely, impeccable, in fact, but it brings a matter of great importance to my attention."

"The Levitation charm," Damien concurred dully, knowing there was no way to avoid it. His mind was painfully blank; he took a gulp of the tea to try and coax some thought through it.

"Umm. Damien, that was very advanced magic you did. I am concerned with your performance in class, more so in light of this new… new occurrence. Have you much trouble with your magic in other classes?" Damien's nod was more than enough confirmation; the boy had no doubt Flitwick had discussed him with the other teachers already. "I thought so. Would I be allowed to see your wand?"

Damien handed it over, and Flitwick looked over it with a careful eye. "Very strong core, I can see, very unusual, as well… Ollivander's? Yes, yes, very unusual... Well, I know Elwin isn't in the business of handing over a wand to someone if it didn't fit them…"

He gave it back after several seconds of inspection and Damien stashed it back up his sleeve. Flitwick sipped his tea before continuing. "That…outburst of yours the other day precipitated the ward, if I am correct, and given the nature of magic, which relies heavily on our emotions, I would say you were under some extreme duress…" He caught the look on Damien's face and waved his hand. "I apologize if this is going over your head—"

Damien jerked, fumbling with the cup on his saucer. "No! No, I…I'm following." Over his head? He understood _very well_ what Flitwick was talking about.

Flitwick shrugged, searching for the tail end of his train of thought. "Yes, yes, I thought not, no, you'll make a very good Ravenclaw, very good…Ah! Yes, yes, emotions. As you know," His voice adopted a lecturing tone, "our magic is linked strongly with our emotions. The more we are feeling, the stronger our magic reacts to it. Now, I won't pry, but I take it you were experiencing severe emotional duress before you put up that ward? Ah, yes, I thought so. Well, I would have to observe you more to be sure, but I think you have a bit more trouble controlling how your emotions affect your magic than others your age. That is to say," He added, the offended look on Damien's visage obvious, "that you are more prone to exposing what you are feeling than others. This means, that you require strong emotional provocation in order to properly wield your magic. See?"

Damien _jumped _on it. "Yes, professor! That makes perfect sense. Sometimes I can't seem to hold in my anger," he continued solicitously, "I can have the most terrible rages. I get irritated easily, too."

Damien was feeling the good little Slytherin when Flitwick concurred that was his problem. They both enjoyed their tea for a few more moments—Damien wishing he had asked for some sugar in his—before Flitwick spoke.

"I would like to help you with this, my boy. I'm not sure if you're aware, but we have a Charms club here at Hogwarts. You could get aid from older students if I'm not available, and you'd make friends quickly, there, I'd imagine, if you're half the Ravenclaw I'm suspecting you'll turn out to be."

Damien choked on his tea. Wiping at his chin with his sleeve, he tried to put on an obsequious expression. It came out half-mangled. "Oh, no, professor, thank you, but I wouldn't feel comfortable asking other students for help. Besides," he turned his head down, allowing his bangs to fall forward and hide his expression—'_It's working!_'— "It's…really embarrassing. I mean…I don't want anyone to know I'm having…you know…problems…with my magic. I am a Ravenclaw, after all. I wouldn't want to damage my House's pride."

Flitwick about beamed at him, and Damien had to hide a smile of victory. "I know exactly what you mean. Well, we'll just have to keep our little sessions private, won't we? Why don't you meet me here tomorrow at noon for some practice? I'm sure you want to get started as soon as you can, get over this little issue so you can focus more on your studies."

Damien made a show of agreeing enthusiastically, thanking the professor for his kind assistance before making for the door. Outside, with the door at his back, he couldn't help the chuckle bubbling in his throat. He had hardly had to do _anything_; Flitwick had done it all for him!

'_Ah,_' he thought as he all but floated to what remained of lunch, '_I should have been a Slytherin._'

* * *

Hermione couldn't sleep. It was one thing to be so bone tired, but another to be so bone tired but not even be able to safely rest in your own bed. She had already dealt with three different pranks ranging from the mild to the semi-serious—she had to go see the nurse about the last one—and she just knew there would be more before Monday came around again. She sighed as she slipped on her shoes, throwing a dark look at the snoring mound that was Pansy. That pug-nosed…_girl_ had been the worst out of all of them; it had been her prank, Hermione was sure, that caused those oozing burns to erupt across her face, and even more sure she had weaseled the spell out of an upperclassman.

She was as quiet as she could be when she left the dormitory at quarter to six in the morning, stealing towards the common room with fear burgeoning in her chest. _They_ had never said she couldn't get up early, but she doubted _they_ would be pleased to find their favorite sport gone. Hermione grimaced at that thought but sighed in relief when she made the corridor, all but running down the cold dungeon hall towards the upper floors. _They_ were comprised of Malfoy, Pansy, Flint, and a few more of the older Slytherins in her House. It was hard for her to remember why she wanted into Slytherin in the first place; _anywhere_ was better than here. Hermione flushed a bit at what she did remember of her thought process during the Sorting. It had been because of Damien, she knew; she had wanted badly to be wherever he was, the first person to show her any kindness on the train; the only person who didn't look at her as simply a _Mudblood_, as _trash_ that was humiliating to be associated with.

But she hadn't made it into his House, him being Sorted into Ravenclaw where she had originally wanted to be and all, and the knowledge was bitter. She hadn't spoken to him since Tuesday, since he had…well, rescued her from Malfoy. She had tried to catch him yesterday as the rest of their Charms class had left for lunch, but the professor had grabbed him before she could approach. What had happened afterwards was horribly embarrassing; it was the reason she hadn't bothered going to dinner the night before, preferring to hole up in the library with the books that wouldn't laugh at her. Where had Pansy got the absurd idea she _liked_ Damien? Even if it _might_ be true, why would that make her laugh so hard? What did Pansy know about him that _she_ didn't?! Why would Pansy know him anyways?!

She had worked herself into a simmering temper by the time she gained the Entrance Hall, the irritation splashing darkly across her face. So what if she might like him? That wasn't any business of Parkinson's. It wasn't as if she was jealous; her Housemate was too busy mooning after Malfoy the Git to care about some Ravenclaw, anyhow.

The cold air outside helped. Hermione walked down the pathways winding their way outside the school proper, watching the ground sharply. It was still very dark outside, even though the first stretches of morning were painting themselves against the sky. She sat down on a cold stone bench, feeling the temperature seep into her bones through her robe. Her uniform didn't offer much protection against the weather, but at least the cool helped her wake up, and it felt nice against her flushed face.

She sat there quietly for a long time, simply enjoying the silence, which was rare in Hogwarts; everywhere you went there was nothing but noisy students causing ruckuses. The sky continued to lighten, and it wasn't until a sharp yell pierced the sky did Hermione snap out of it.

She had apparently fallen asleep, leaning against the cold column behind her, because the sky was a nice blue in color. The air was decidedly warmer, too, but she still pulled her robe closer to her as she blearily blinked around. What had that been? She couldn't see anything. She waited, but when nothing showed she made to stand up.

Another sound, from around the corner ten feet to her left, stopped her mid-motion. She slowly sat down again, watching the corner and waiting. It had sounded human; her muscles tensed. _They_ hadn't found her, had they?

No. Instead of the Slytherins she was anticipating a group of Gryffindors who looked about her age rounded the corner, laughing raucously at something.

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**A/N: Here's the preview. I hope to get the rest done soon, but that's not looking...well, very likely. I just hope you enjoy what I have managed to get done so far.**


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